Post Category - Play & PartyPlay & Party - Post Category - IndoorIndoor - Post Category - PartiesPartiesWhy Not Plan Your Next Kiddo Party In A Game Van, Mamas?!
With my biggest baby turning 10 in sweltering June and during Ramadan I was initially stumped about what to do for his party. Lucas told me he wanted to invite 9 friends and when I asked what they all enjoy doing he shrugged and said ‘gaming’. That, my friends, is when I remembered GameVan!
I booked a 90 minute party during which the van would be parked on my drive, power cables run in to the house and the boys would be able to play on the van’s two PlayStation 4s, an Xbox One S and a Wii U, each connected to 4 flat screens. Lucas was beside himself with excitement and I was delighted that we’d have the ease of a party at home without a pack of 10 year old boys charging around my house!
On the day of the party GameVan’s lovely owners, Adeel and Carolina, arrived half an hour early to set up. When everything was ready they showed Lucas in to the van and his face literally lit up. His friends started arriving and the van was greeted shouts of ‘cool’, ‘epic’ and ‘awesome’! The van can seat up to 12 with everyone playing at the same time if they’re playing multi-player games.
They have loads of regular as well as online games and are supervised throughout the party to ensure that only age appropriate games are played. There were 2 portable ACs inside which did a good job of keeping the temperature comfortable despite it being 40 degrees outside. No food or drinks are allowed inside the van so we enforced short breaks every so often so they could come inside, hydrate and fuel themselves with handfuls of crisps.
I was genuinely surprised by how much interaction there was between the boys while they were playing. We could literally hear the roars of victory when someone won inside the house! At one point I popped my head in and noticed that a few of the boys didn’t have controllers. Carolina explained that it was because they wanted to take turns playing Fortnite (a single-player online game which they all seem to be obsessed with) on both of the PlayStations. There was a bit of resistance when I insisted that they put a different, multi-player game on one of the PlayStations but I was happy seeing more of them playing and I think they were too once the Fortnite mourning period had ended (about 30 seconds later)!
At the end of the gaming time they came inside for pizza and cake. Conscious of growing boys’ need for their 5 a day I had offered to prepare some raw vegetable sticks and perhaps a fruit salad but it was a hard no from Lucas who insisted that only food of little to no nutritional value should be served at his party – so pizza and cake it was! I might not have won any awards from the other Mums for returning their sons hyped up on video games and junk food but I got maximum Mummy points from the birthday boy who said it was the best party ever!
GameVan info:
Tel: 0504967885
Prices from 1700 AED
