We first visited Play 2 in Diggle, Oldham, when our oldest son was a little over a year old. We had a bit of a negative experience (which I’ll go into later) twice at that point, so didn’t return for a year or so. More recently, with our son now just over 2, we’ve been back and the experience was a little different and our perspective and rating therefore much higher than they would have been before.
Play2 Diggle Rating and Quick Review
[pipdig_stars rating=”4″]
Our rating is a 4/5 for Play2 in Diggle.
In a nutshell:
- It’s large
- It’s clean
- It has one of the best healthy snack choices of any soft play centre I’ve been too
- Great for children once they’re confidently on their feet
- Not ideal for toddlers under around 2 as there are consistently (in our experience) older children in the toddler section and this isn’t police
I’ve included more details below if you want the longer version.
Play2 Diggle – What’s at this Soft Play Centre?
Play2 is the second site of one of Oldham’s biggest soft play centres, Play. I believe Play took over the site from another soft play centre and changed it more in keeping with the style of their first centre on Shaw Road, Oldham.
It’s a pretty large centre with a multi storey main climbing frame and slides and a separate toddler which also has slides.
There are birthday party facilities and a cafe too. The cafe actually serves some pretty decent healthy food choices. This is refreshing compared to other soft play centres we’ve been to. The prices of food are pretty reasonable though hot drinks seemed a little on the pricier side.
Play2 Diggle Address
While it isn’t impossible to get to Play2 by bus (the 184 runs through Diggle), most people drive. The address and location is as below:
Our Review in Detail
Our first visit to Play2 in Diggle was when our oldest son was just over a year old. At this point, he was walking, albeit not hugely confidently and he was easily knocked off his feet. We’d been taking him to Cheeky Chimps regularly because the toddler area is great and they really tend to stay on top of making sure no bigger kids are in there.
The toddler area is what we were interested in. Make no mistake – the toddler area at Play2 is amazing. It features:
- 2 slides that are big enough to be exciting but not so big that the tots can’t enjoy them
- A little climbing ramp up to the slides
- Soft play blocks and toys
It’s a good sized area!
The biggest problem for me is that there were loads of older children running around – one knocked our son off his feet. These are children at 7 or 8.
That was so off putting for me that I actually emailed management after our visit and mentioned this to them and the fact it wasn’t policed. They offered a free repeat visit and when I went back, the same thing happened again.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that it’s really the job of parents to make sure their older children aren’t in the toddler area. But despite signs specifying a maximum age limit, not all parents do. So I think at those times, there has to be some intervention from management.
It was for that reason that we didn’t go back to Play2. We were disappointed really because the facilities are brilliant.
But as Oliver is a little older now and far more confident on his feet, we took him back a couple of weeks ago. He still enjoyed the toddler area but also enjoyed the full size frame. It was a term time morning during the week so it was quiet enough and there were no older children there.
Of all the soft play centres we’ve been to, this one has some of the best facilities. And as Oliver gets older and we’ll be less concerned about him getting knocked over by bigger kids in the tots area, we’ll probably visit more regularly.
