Contenders, ready? The Gladiators experience is a great family day out. The Gladiators course is even harder than it looks on TV, says Lucy Tobin.
The Gladiators course is even harder than it looks on TV. Hang Tough's hanging hoops - the ones that I thought looked quite doable from the sofa - are, I can confirm, not doable. They spin, they swing, I fell off immediately on three attempts, and I did not have a 80kg hulk of muscle called Fury or Bionic zooming towards me at the same time. The Wall, likewise, was quite the challenge, despite my being devoid of an almost-7-foot Apollo predator grabbing for my ankles at the same time.
How do I know? Because I have just spent a day at the Gladiators Experience, the colossal 100,000 sq ft replica arena of the show's Sheffield arena that opened at Birmingham's NEC this summer. And amongst the proliferation of TV, film and sports spin-off experiences available in London and beyond right now - this was one of the best days out my family (including three kids aged 11, nine and six) have enjoyed together.
The premise is simple: you are the contender. Walking into the arena having picked team red or blue, we had the real kit on, real helmet, knee and elbow pads, and the real events in front of us. First, a tough, sweat-making warm-up led by a passionate, black-and-white striped umpire who took his job very seriously. Then, we started with the Eliminator - it gets the largest queues so head to one of these first. There are two: a junior Eliminator for those between 1.2m and 1.5m, and the full monstrosity for the rest of us.
If, like me, Gladiators was the highlight of your entire Saturday night in the early nineties (Jet and Wolf were my favourites, since you are asking), the sight of that travelator in the flesh will light a competitive fire in your chest.
As I stepped up to the starting pad and one of the many (kind and safety-obsessed) staff declared, CONTESTANTS, REEEEEEADY!, I became, delusionally, a person who could smash all records.
The feeling was brief: my niece, who is 21 and irritatingly athletic, finished well ahead of me. But I did not care, for the course - up and over beams, rope swings, climbing net, zip line, balance beam, then finally that famous travelator, sped up or down at the switch of another staff member's button - was brilliant fun. Especially with the roar of my kids screaming 'goooo mama!'. I am already planning a better training regime ahead of a return visit.
You wear a wristband that gives you 75 minutes in the arena, starting when you start the first event. It records your time in each one, producing league tables and videos at the end. To mount The Wall, we were strapped into tight harnesses and aimed to smash the red button at the top first. On Unleash, we sped around a circular sprint track, leaping over obstacles (although not the true walls seen on the show) and up stairs where our time was clocked to the decimal, which means my nine-year-old beat me in front of witnesses.
There are two Duels, the pugil stick battle on a raised platform, at a junior and adult height. Mouthguards provided, family lore established as a certain family member hit another off their platform in seconds.
What was novel, too, is that Gladiators Experience did not make you feel like you were being squeezed through a money-squeezing mangle. Sure, there was a shop and merch (£45 for a nylon t shirt and shorts, really?) and you could pay extra for meet-and-greet with current Gladiators, but the experience price - £44 for adults, £39 for children - seemed fair, as we spent over four hours having fun. Less so was the £22 charge if you want to spectate aka supervise your kids. But mineral water dispensers around the arena for free were a nice touch - you do not get that at Disney World - and changing rooms and lockers were plentiful, clean and spacious. Then there is The Vault, a free museum of Gladiators history and memorabilia, with the original costumes, archive clips, photos, facts, and cut-outs of the current Gladiators (where I learnt I go up to Apollo's belly button). It is well worth 20 minutes of your time once the adrenaline has faded (only visit after your 75 minutes has run out), and has lots of photography stations where you can pose with the key equipment.
My six, nine and 11-year-old all found the whole thing thrilling. Junior versions of most events meant nobody was left out (though I would note that junior does not mean 'easier for adults with not as much upper body strength as they previously believed'). Rumour has it the event might migrate south to London in the future, but in the meantime, it is absolutely worth the schlep up north to enter the arena, test your family's grit, or just live out your 90s TV fantasies for a few hours. Tickets from £44; runs in Birmingham until 31 August.
