Westfield Stratford City Santa Review

As regular readers will know over a week ago we went to see Santa at Westfield Stratford City. It was definitely by far the BEST Santa experience I have had. You don't have to take my word for it. Look at the kids - my son and my two nieces:

What made it special. Well:

• The cars that you can pay to hire, to push your tot around in. Aaron has loved these for years, but there were many tears when he grew out of the red one, but they've now introduced a higher height limit and black cars. HE WAS THRILLED. Very easy to whizz short legs around a large shopping centre when you can push them in here. He's been out of a buggy for two years, but LOVES THIS.
• The shopping centre is so festive and the team on the concierge desk are FABULOUS. Finally they have a team equal to the word "concierge". 
• As you will see if you've watched my video above, the experience is immersive, as Chloe commented on You Tube.
• The personalised 4D movie you watch in a theatre is INCREDIBLY touching. The Elf shines a light on her face and narrates it. My nieces were 6 and 10, my son 4, and all three equally LOVED it.
• The elves on duty all remain in character and totally add value to the experience which literally couldn't be better.
• Santa is warm and genuine.
• The room you meet him in is so traditional and realistic.
• My heart wrenched at seeing the train circling above our heads - it just caught me as incredibly moving and judging by the video, my boy has the same taste as me.
• The gifts are split into ages AND all individually wrapped (neither of which was the case at Harrods where we'd been only the day before) and this was fabulous as it means all three children got something different. The unwrapping is all part of it isn't it.
• The photo packages are GREAT - we got a bauble with our photo in.

Plenty of photo opportunities there. LOVE the sleigh. Aaron's wearing his Primark Christmas shirt which I adore, and I've got me Chrimbo jumper on :-) Aaron's shirt has done three Santas now and was only a fiver! Please note, you won't be able to take pics with Santa, as you buy those. I was only allowed for the purposes of this review.

Here's some info for you:

Book tickets now to meet Santa, enjoy a new 4D film experience and all kids will receive a gift from Santa too! 

The Grotto will be open between 20th November and the 24th December 2014. Santa gets really busy, so we recommend booking in advance.

When booking we will ask for the age of the children. Please note we cannot provide gifts for children over 12 years old.

You can find Santa's Grotto located outside next to Waitrose and Stratford International Station on the Lower Ground Floor. The best car park is car park A.

You can book your tickets here until 24th December 2014: Santas Grotto Westfield Stratford.

You will note on that same link just given, you can book: Santa's Grotto AND The Hidden House AND Santa's breakfast.

Disclosure: I was provided with a 16 pounds family ticket to Santa's Grotto gratis, for an honest review. We truly loved it and all words/opinions are my own.

Woolly Wonderland, The Gruffalo, Westfield Stratford City and Christmas Jumper Day for Save The Children

Hi All

We met the Gruffalo this morning at Westfield Stratford City "Save The Children" Woolly Wonderland. Today was the pre-launch event for the Save The Children Christmas Jumper Day (Friday 13th December 2013) and all of the events that will happen in Westfield Stratford City in the run up to it - details on that first link I gave, for all the many activities that will happen in Woolly Wonderland, including:

• Designer Christmas jumper installation | 28 November - 13 December 2013

• Woolly Wonderland: Christmas jumper workshops at Westfield  5-13 December 2013 includes the Gruffalo storytime, click here and fill in the Sign Up Now section to book onto any of the sessions at Westfield Stratford in Woolly Wonderland.

• Christmas Tree Sessions: live music night hosted by Lauren Laverne | 5 December 2013

• Guinness World Record attempt: 13 December 2013

I'll share some more info and photos in this post later.

For now, 

REGISTER FOR 

* CHRISTMAS JUMPER DAY *

ACTIVITIES HERE:

Sign up now and SAVE THE CHILDREN will send you a free Christmas Jumper Day kit packed with top tips, recipes and ideas to help you have a woolly great day and raise as much as possible.

I have already signed up, 

so if you, 

as a loyal reader of NewMumOnline 

would like to add a £1 to my team total then just:

Text 

TEAMAARONMUM to 70050 

they'll add £1 to my fundraising total.

 

Christmas is here, a slideshow of all of the photos I took this morning at +Westfield UK Stratford.  Thanks for the invite +Christine Mosler and hope you like the photos +Jennie Edspire and +Jenny Kearney - Ruth you can spot yourself in a view of the snaps too.

Chris at Thinly Spread who organised the event has already written about it here: Woolly Wonderland!

 
To convince Aaron to leave Westfield Stratford this morning, to go to nursery, I had to buy him these (below) for £10 in Mothercare.  They are supposed to be in the slideshow prior to the wellies but You Tube missed them off somehow!
 

 
Yes that is the train carriage dirty carpet not mine.
 

On Friday 13th December 2013 Save the Children is calling on people across the UK to help make the world better with a sweater and take part in the tradition of wearing a kitsch Christmas jumper in exchange for a £1 donation to raise money for its life saving work with children the world over.

Support for Save the Children’s Christmas Jumper Day has already started in earnest, with celebrities posing in their festive woollies.

Myleene Klass, Julie Walters, Lorraine Kelly, Gok Wan, Rochelle Humes, Erin O’Connor, Lauren Laverne, Alex Jones, Bruno Tonioli, Ashleigh & Pudsey, Arlene Philips, Nate James, Simon Rimmer, Jay Rayner, Daniel Roche, Kate Thornton, Jack Topping, Natasha Kaplinsky and Dom Joly have all dug out their finest Christmas knitwear, ready to wear in support of Save the Children’s Christmas campaign.

Wear your jumper on Christmas Jumper Day on 13 December and donate £1 to Save the Children at

www.christmasjumperday.org .

 You can buy your Christmas jumper from John Lewis, official retail
partner of Christmas Jumper Day.

£25 from the sale of every jumper in the Save the Children range

goes to the charity.

Westfield - Stratford City - Baby Friendly? Hell Yeah!

Hi

Aaron and I spent the whole day in Westfield Stratford City yesterday (Friday 17th February 2012) and we both loved it.

Getting Around
The Car - oh the car! the car! the car!  We saw it on the way in, but if I took him out of the buggy to put him in the car, where oh where would the buggy go......???

Aha, Mummy found a solution, prompted by the fact that when Aaron saw a Polish boy in a car he physically cried; real tears and everything.

Aaron - his first car at the age of only 20 months! :-)

He loved the car! so much that we were in Westfield Stratford City from just after midday until 21:00 and he spent it all in the car, more or less.... oh apart from going into a high chair to eat :-)

So if you want to shop in sanity get the car.  It costs £5 and when you return it, you get £2 of that back.  Oh but the Concierge Desk closes at 21:00 so bring it back late and, ermmm, you've paid the full £5 for the car (you snooze you lose!)

Where we ate
Giraffe.  We wanted somewhere with a child friendly menu and it certainly has that - also, they do a reduced price lunch menu.  They have high chairs and the staff are very very attentive, and also child friendly - shall I say it one more time? Ha ha! Giraffe is child friendly - it is in the food hall, but I can't remember which floor and I was so busy enjoying the food I did not take any photos - hey that's saying something for me, when my camera is always at the ready!

Best thing we discovered

Mr Pretzels

This is what the Westfield Stratford City website says about them:

Using the finest ingredients in their low fat soft dough, pretzels are prepared, theatrically rolled and baked in the oven to golden brown perfection in full view of the customer. The product is always freshly warm and prepared a few moments before it's served with choice of tasty toppings - Cinnamon & Sugar, Chocolate, Nutella, Salt, Parmesan Cheese, PretzelDog and more.
"The taste of our freshly made pretzels make people want to come back time and time again."
Mmmm, they’re lovely!

We had cinnamon & sugar - they were so good I can imagine being drawn back to the Centre just for those alone! I am not kidding!

Toy Shops we went to
Disney Store and Lego Shop

Where we bought:

Reduced from £20 to £14 = bargain! And he loves it - Daddy does too!

A lovely addition to his growing lego set.  He loves characters, figures etc...

What made it a nice place to go
The car! and the lovely people on the Concierge Desk.  Also, how very very easy it is to get there.

Be prepared to stay a while, so bring snacks and drinks for the little one.  I had bananas and 3 bottles with me, and he ate a really generous serving of pasta in Giraffe as well as the apple juice that went with it, on the lunch menu deal.

There is a soft play area in Westfield too, and lots of coin operated toys.

The only shop I was very very disappointed by was John Lewis; the toy shop has a token item for each category, like ONE Thomas The Tank Engine train, but is too limited.... The baby clothes are too pricey and the restaurant has nothing child friendly to eat, and I just find John Lewis too sterile - although I don't feel that way when I am in Oxford Street John Lewis.

However I loved John Lewis' London 2012 shop, where they even have a viewing area (not to be missed) of the Olympics site as it is developing.

They even say on the Westfield website:

John Lewis is proud to be a sponsor of the 2012 Olympics and happy to be in such a key position in Stratford, with stunning views over the park.

So, all in all, we had a really good day there, and I am not normally a fan of malls.  Been to Bluewater once, and Lakeside once.  Plus, I am not exactly a shopper either, so for me to spend a whole day there, it speaks volumes.

Because the car was the thing that made our day memorable, I have to leave you with another photo of it. Oh and a tip!  When we went to get the car, they were all out on loan so we waited for one to be returned.  As there is no time limit on how long you can have it, we were in for a long wait, until like a bus, after a 10 minute wait two came along at once - I was so glad I waited.

So, go there, and report back to me.  I hope you have a good day.

During my searches for images for this post, I came across 3 really great blog posts.
This one is about a Tot at Westfield Stratford City at Xmas shopping time.
This one is the same blogger but during the January sales.  You'll see the same red car :-)
And this one is a tongue in cheek review of all of the offerings in the Food Courts (and even he approves of Mr Pretzels).

Anyway, I hope I haven't forgotten anything that I wanted to include in this post.

Bye for now, Liska & Aaron
xxx