Bear Grylls Adventure

The Bear Grylls Adventure located at Birmingham’s NEC is the newest addition to the Merlin group of attractions and happily, for me, it’s location is very handy.

First off it’s a fabulous place to visit. If you’re a Merlin Annual Passholder you get a £1 deal which currently gives you access to the 30 min ‘Fear Factor’ activity – think blindfolded crystal maze meets I’m a celeb. Not wanting to give any spoilers I won’t go into details. Although I will say that one in our party upon entering simply said “nope” and promptly left the others to it. The chaps on reception were great though, very understanding and that ‘nope’ turned to a smile after a second attempt was a success… I say currently because a few months ago the £1 deal was for the indoor climbing so I suspect it’ll be something different at some point in the future. 

With any activity at Bear Grylls Adventure, you also get unlimited goes on the marine inspired assault course. It’s very much like a soft play area for teens and adults, and depending on the instructor you get, you may end up doing push ups if you’e not doing it right, all in good fun of course (the kids love it).

Outside of this there’s loads of activities to do, (although it’s not cheap even with the 25% merlin discount) so look out for the deals.

There’s Scuba diving with sharks, feed diving, cage snorkelling, outdoor high ropes, indoor climbing, indoor archery, shooting, indoor skydiving and escape rooms so plenty to choose from but on this occasion we did the indoor skydiving. 

Indoor Skydiving

Unlike going to a theme park, for most of us, this is a once in a while activity because although it’s a wonderful experience, it’s not cheap.

There were a coupe of surprises on the arrival that made me wince a little. Had I been better informed I would have enjoyed the day more so hopefully anyone reading this will benefit from my hindsight…

I read on the website that your time in the tunnel is equivalent to 3 x 12,000ft drops which I’m sure is technically true but in reality, the 1 hour experience was just 2 x 60 second drops in the wind tunnel. I knew it wouldn’t be long in the tunnel, but if like me you’ve read the website’s description and are expecting 3 drops, you could be a little disappointed. But don’t let this put you off, because it’s a great experience, hopefully you can see the joy on my youngest’s face in the photo. 

Prior to entering the tunnel you have to have a safety briefing, the instructor introduced himself and made everyone feel at ease. He was a great instructor, lots of personality and super skills which we saw at the end. The briefing includes  watching a video and learning the hand signals to enable you to communicate with your instructor. This is important to get the most out of your drop, because you can’t talk in there due to the noise of the wind and you need to communicate. 

During the safety briefing, we were given the opportunity to pay an extra £7 for the instructor to take you higher in the tunnel on your second turn. You can’t really turn this down, and similarly to supermarkets having sweets at the check out, the pressure from the kids is on for you to agree. Even though I dislike being up-sold when I’m not expecting it, I agreed to let mine go higher. But for a family who’s budgeted for a day out, an extra £28 for a family of four could sting a little. So if this is you, be prepared for the extra cost.

I also thought the high fly add-on would add time to the experience but it didn’t. It’s another £14 for an extra minute. We didn’t do that. 

Food & Drink

There’s a good selection of food and the Merlin Pass 20% discount is handy. There’s wraps, pre made sandwiches, salads, hot dogs and pizzas, upon which you can have dead critters for £2.50 if you’re so inclined. And there’s a Costa franchise in there too which is lovely. The seating area is lots of picnic style benches with camouflage netting above which creates a fun atmosphere. There’s also lots of restaurant choices in Resorts World which is a few minutes walk away, and will save on parking too (see below). 

Taking Photos

The official photos and videos can be bought but they’re also happy for you to take your own photos and video. You also get a free photo at the end of the assault course so make sure you get a locker because the wrist band is the key you need to get the photo. For the skydiving I would recommend taking a video of your skydiver from the excellent viewing platform, then using an app called snapstill to take an image still of your video. I always do this and generally end up with super photos. 

Parking

Parking at Bear Grylls is a bit of a bug bear. It was £5 and a 12-15 minute walk away. They say that if you validate your parking token which we did, it costs £2 for the first hour then £1 for every hour after but ours was a fiver for 3 hours at the machine, there’s nobody at the car park to query it so we paid and left. I’m not going to make a fuss over £1 but these extra ££’s mount up.

Merlin Perks

The best thing about the Merlin Pass is the £1 offer. It’s great and you can bring 10 buddies to share the discount too. But overall, Merlin perks as compared to other attractions is a little disappointing. As mentioned above there’s the 20% food & drink discount, but you can park as Resorts World which is both closer and cheaper parking if you spend £20 – that’s lunch.

There’s no Merlin concession for parking. As a comparison, Alton Towers is £6 for a full on day out, and free for Premium Passholders. I’m not sure why Bear Grylls isn’t similar. Legoland Birmingham isn’t free parking because they don’t have their own car park, but the trade off is that you get free admission to both Legoland and Sea Life centre.

The 25% off all activities is good, but non-merlins get 20% off anyway when you book online and they do run half price deals fairly regularly; there was a 50% off last summer and there’s currently 50% off Skydiving for the whole of January which makes it cheaper than having a Merlin Pass. So it’s worth looking out for discounts. 

Finally…

Just a 5 min walk away from Bear Grylls is Resorts World; an indoor leisure complex, with shops, outlet stores, a hotel, casino, loads of restaurants, a cinema, gaming complex, escape rooms and more and it’s closer to Bear Grylls than the Bear Grylls car park, in fact it’s so close that you have to walk around Resorts World from the BG car park.

If you spend over £20 in Resorts World, parking at the RW multi storey is reduced to £2.50 for the day. And if you go to the cinema, parking is just £1.50. You can get Meerkat deals at the cinema too. So it’s worth considering if you’re planning a day out. There’s a Nando’s, TGI Fridays and more to choose from.

So although I do have a bug bear with the parking (and the upsell) I do love Bear Grylls Adventure and I definitely recommend it as a day out,  just be prepared for those extra costs.

Hope this helps!