Active Reality Reviews 

We booked Active Reality in Wimbledon for 9am this morning for my son’s 12th birthday party with 8 of his friends.
We were told to arrive 15mins before which we did and were taken inside at 9am.
Firstly, to set the scene, this is in a Leisure Centre and the ‘Active Reality’ room was in fact the spin studio. Bikes were pushed to each side of the room to make space for the session. Very underwhelming to say the least so don’t be fooled my the phots/videos on the Active Reality website.
Then we were told they were having trouble connecting the headsets. After waiting for 30mins the boys were all getting restless as there was still no success. Our total booking was only for 1 hour! So we made the decision to leave.

It was such a disappointing morning. My son was there to celebrate his birthday - he was so gutted and embarrassed in front of his friends.

When speaking with the girl who was running it, she said that her colleague had an issue the day prior and it took him 2 hours to fix it! If that was the case, why wouldn’t they have set up the headsets earlier knowing that had a 9am party arriving.

I definitely wouldn’t recommend this at all and will be requesting a full refund.

Seren (in Cardiff) was a fantastic host. She welcomed us and everything was set up ready to start. She guided the kids through the setup and the games on offer. They all really enjoyed it. Jaden was also a great help with organising, very responsive to emails and helped with all our enquiries. A fab birthday party for our son on his 9th birthday!

This was for an 11th birthday party, which unfortunately was riddled with technical issues.
The two facilitators were great by the way and really tried to fix things. They gave us a free game voucher, but it appears to only be for Wednesdays and it's not clear if it's a full replacement for the 1 hour, 6 person private session we had booked.
Issues were:
We only had 5 headsets available, so one of the group had to sit out
One child couldn't play the first game as their controllers weren't working
One child only had one working controller throughout the games
Many children had issues with their headsets not working properly, so a lot of time was spent trying to fix them
One child's headset was set up incorrectly, so the others couldn't see them and they kept running into each other
One game didn't load correctly so had to be restarted
In one game, two players weapons didn't load, so they couldn't join the game
Over the whole hour they played 3 x8 minute games, with much of the time spent fixing problems.

This wasn't what I was anticipating when paying nearly £200 for a birthday experience. Although we appreciated the free game gesture and the effort the facilitators put in, the service we received was not what we paid for.

I have emailed the company directly and had no response.

Updating: " Customer service reached out to me the next day. Although I was on shift and couldn’t answer the call, they still followed up with a sincere apology via email. While they weren’t able to resolve the issue regarding the party room for celebrating with cakes and food—and I’ll now need to find an alternative venue after the game next week—they did accept my suggestion to add clearer information to their website. I believe their customer service will continue to improve."
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Before booking an activity for my son's birthday, I tried to contact your team with some questions, but no one answered the phone or returned my call. Despite this, I went ahead and booked a one-hour activity. Since then, I’ve sent several emails, but still haven’t received any response.

My son’s birthday is next Sunday, and I have yet to hear anything from you. At this point, I have no idea whether the activity will actually take place. I’m extremely disappointed with the lack of communication — this feels like terrible customer service, or more accurately, no service at all.

Is this a scam?
Please contact me as soon as possible.

I’m not sure which locations the other reviews are based on, but this one is for AR in Swindon (Link Center).
It was for an 11th birthday party of 8 people. They were split into two groups as only four people could participate at once, which isn’t great for the people observing. Initially I was surprised at how small the space was, it’s essentially a room. This didn’t seem to be an issue for the people playing, but it meant there was limited space for those not playing who had make shift seats which were not near the only screen designed to watch the players in their ‘virtual world’, hence they started to get bored very quickly.
Two of the games were not downloading properly, I was told this was a problem across all sites and some games were not suitable for 11 year olds - these were quickly changed. Game instructions are issued over a microphone which was hard to hear so at times the game started and people didn’t know what to do. All in all I can see the potential for it to be a great experience, but through lack of appropriate facilities and organisation I didn’t feel this was value for money, given the cost of a closed session.

AR hosted my sons 11th party for 6 lads. Absolutely brilliant time! The VR was good quality, nicely interactive and the service was great.
I highly recommend.

Me and my partner went there a few weeks back. It was my partners first experience of VR, and what a mind blowing experience. Loved every second of it and the instructor was brilliant. Definitely recommend!

Our son had the most amazing birthday party here, the host was brilliant and the children had the best time. They didn’t top talking about!
We would highly recommend!

Great experience for all our party of 6 adults. Really enjoyable . Can’t recommend highly enough. Luca our host was absolutely brilliant and made our experience even better.

Booked a taster session, loved it. Brilliant tech, helpful people, brilliant fun for the family. Zombies were DEFINITELY a big hit in our group!

Booked this as a surprise for my partners birthday and we both loved it so so much. Amazing hosts, perfect music selection and great game choices. Will deffo be back and can’t wait for them to expand into larger spaces.

Had a 1 hour session at Active Reality in Bristol with some colleagues and thoroughly enjoyed it. Was not as scary as expected! Looking to book again very soon.

Our experience at Active Reality was amazing! We booked a birthday party for our 10 year old son in Bath and it was brilliant. According to him, it was his best birthday ever. Oakey from Active Reality was simply brilliant. Our son is an anxious child and Oakley very kindly agreed to show us the venue and the kit in advance so that it wouldn't feel scary for him on the day. We felt so well looked after - Oakley went the extra mile to make sure that our son was happy. And the actual VR experience is brilliant. Really high quality kit and a great variety of games to try. Thank you so much Active Reality - we will definitely be coming back!

This was awesome. What a great way to spend 30 mins! We did the trial sessions at the Bath venue and I took my son (11) and 2 of his friends and had the full game room to ourselves. We all loved it, such a great experience and our game host Oakley was very friendly and helpful. Have done a bit of VR play on the PS4 but nothing like this. Really immersive experience and the fact you are being motion tracked so you can move around and interact with the environment and the other players was brilliant. We played 3 battle games - all a bit different but all great fun. Really, really recommend this!

I went with a friend and we both had an amazing time, the team are very friendly and the experience can't be compared - the games are great and give you such an adrenaline rush as well as being really fun to play. I highly recommend for everyone to try!

Wow wow wow I never knew things like this existed!!! It was brilliant! An unbelievably amazing experience all round. We played with family and everyone had the best time. We laughed so much… Couldn’t think of anything more fun to do together, we will definitely be back with friends and more family. It has to be experienced to understand how incredible this is. Thank you

Absolutely awesome experience! I went with my two teenage sons, husband and brother just to try it out and it was SO much fun. The equipment was easy to use and comfortable, and even as a VR novice it was easy to get to grips with how the games worked. The games were a variety of shooting or archery, player vs player or team based capture the flag. It was very energetic and I had so much fun running around trying to shoot my kids, who were obviously better than me! A must try and definitely an ideal thing for a party or energetic get together.

Such brilliant fun, we can't wait to do it again!

Bloody awesome! You have to get your mates together and try it out, great laugh!

A great experience, the most fun I've had since before lockdown!