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We were delighted to be invited to attend a regional family event at McDonald’s. We visited the Basingstoke branch to explore how the team are encouraging family fun with events and activities.

Upstairs in the restaurant is a dedicated play area which is bright and colourful. What I loved most is the Perspex screens which allow parents to supervise their children while they play. There are spaces to keep shoes, which is sooooo clever as usually shoes just get abandoned under tables and could easily get lost.

What is the best way to have fun? With friends and family of course! 

My sister and her children live in Basingstoke as do fellow bloggers Bella and Dawn from Dear Mummy Blog (small world, Bella goes to school with my niece!) and I also invited a friend with her boys to join the fun.

My favourite recent McDonald’s introduction is the table service. For busy parents juggling children, shopping etc, this is really helpful. It means you can sit down with the children and wait for your food rather than trying to carry a tray, coordinate kids and find a seat.

As well as having a fantastic time together in the play area, the children enjoyed eating their food whilst playing games on tablets (gosh, they are competitive!). Staff had card games available to play which encourage speech and language development as well as reading and listening skills.

There were pictures and tablecloths to colour in whilst waiting for the food to arrive and then after eating the children marvelled at balloon creations: there was an awful lot of balloon sword swashbuckling after that!

The final activity was face painting, a whole range of designs available! Thank you so much to the artistic and creative McDonald’s staff: Anya and Leah wanted to be princesses so had pretty designs drawn on while Matthew wanted to be a fearsome pirate, me hearties!

During the holidays these free family activities and events are available every other day (at this particular restaurant) and will continue to run during weekends and school holidays for the rest of 2019: Ask in your local McDonald’s to find out more!

*I’m working in a paid relationship with McDonald’s UK and BritMums highlighting the Family Events at McDonald’s restaurants around the UK