For the autumn, Christmas, spring and summer holidays
Interactive game park · Beverwijk
An after-school care outing
in the holiday week
and it is all indoors
9 game rooms on the Handelskade in Beverwijk. Light-up floors that react to your feet, walls covered in buttons and challenges a small group can only win together. The children are on their feet for an hour and a half, and outside the weather can do whatever it likes.
- Wed to Sun open, closed Monday and Tuesday
- 24.50 euros per child, from 5 children
- 9 game rooms, all indoors
Filling a holiday week, with the weather as your biggest unknown
Putting a holiday programme together means working around everything you do not know yet. The numbers are only final on the morning itself, a colleague always drops out, and the outdoor plan hangs on a forecast that is five days old.
PlayKinetix is an indoor game park on the Handelskade in Beverwijk. 9 game rooms with light-up floors that react to your feet, button walls that light up and challenges you can only solve together. A wristband keeps score.
This page is written for whoever does the planning, so it also says what does not work here.
Five school holidays, and four of them are wet
Autumn, Christmas, spring, May: those are the weeks when an outdoor programme falls apart most often. The summer holiday is the only one you would risk it in, and that one runs for six weeks, so it has its share of rainy afternoons too.
An outing that is indoors never has to be moved. That sounds dull, and it is the strongest argument this place has. You book it three weeks ahead without once looking at the forecast.
Indoors does not mean sitting still here. Expect red faces. Every room explains what the children do in it.
Which days you can come
Worth watching, because it wipes out almost half your options: the park is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, holiday week or not. Of the five weekdays that leaves Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
On weekdays the doors open at 12:00, so a morning trip is out. This is an afternoon programme, and it fits a normal after-school care afternoon.
- Wednesday and Thursday — open from 12:00, last ticket 18:00
- Friday — open from 12:00, last ticket 22:00
- Saturday — open from 10:30, last ticket 22:00
- Sunday — open from 10:30, last ticket 18:00
- Monday and Tuesday — closed
For groups we agree the exact time within those days together. The holiday periods are all listed here.
What an afternoon like this looks like
The structure of the Sport Deal, the package that runs most smoothly for a group.
- 1beforehandSplit into small groups
Wristbands on, one briefing for everyone at once. Divide the children into fixed small groups straight away and put a supervisor with each one.
- 245 minFirst round
Those small groups work their way round the rooms. Whoever goes in together comes out together. That keeps the head count simple.
- 3breakCrisps and squash
Sitting at a table, unlimited squash. Also the moment to take a child who has had enough stimulation out of the noise for a bit.
- 445 minSecond round
Different rooms, different opponents. The wristbands keep counting, so there is something to talk about on the way back.
- 51.5 hoursDone
An hour and a half after walking in you are back outside, well before the first parents turn up.
What it costs, and where that pinches
The Sport Deal costs €24.50 per person from 5 people: 45 minutes of play, a break with crisps and unlimited squash, then another 45 minutes. For €26.50 a soft drink is included. Want to make it two hours, with a table of your own and a bag of crisps per child? Then you end up with the children's party package at €24.50 per child.
Now the awkward part. For twenty children that is almost five hundred euros for an hour and a half, and an outing falls outside Dutch childcare benefit: it comes out of your activities budget or a parental contribution.
So do not use this to fill a whole day; it is too short and too expensive for that. Use it as the one afternoon the children go on about for the rest of the week.
Getting here is the real hurdle
The Handelskade is on a business park, not in a residential street. For sites in Beverwijk, Heemskerk, Velsen-Noord and Wijk aan Zee it is cycling distance, and then this is simply doable.
Further away and you need a coach, which quickly costs more than the admission does. Work that out first; that is where plans like this tend to founder.
The train works too: Beverwijk station is an eight-minute walk, and there is a direct train every half hour from Heemskerk, Castricum, Uitgeest, Alkmaar and Haarlem. From most other towns you have to change, and with twenty children that is a different kind of afternoon. Parking is free and right outside the door.
Four things to sort out in advance
Skip one of them and you will notice halfway through the afternoon.
Divide supervision room by room
The rooms are separate spaces. One member of staff cannot keep twelve children in view when they are spread across 9 rooms. Work with fixed small groups and agree who stays with which group.
Think about the sensory load
Light, sound, pace and a scoreboard watching everything. Every group has one child for whom that becomes too much. Agree where that child can go, and make joining in without caring about the score just as acceptable.
Check the ages
It comes into its own from about six, the year children move up to groep 3. For four- and five-year-olds it is too fast. If your group runs from 4 to 12, arrange something separate for the youngest ones.
Sort the invoice out in advance
State in your request who the invoice should be made out to and which PO number or cost centre belongs on it. Ask that before you book: your colleague cannot put a few hundred euros on a personal card.
Questions site managers ask
Do 25 to 40 children fit in at the same time?
The whole park holds 70 people, so a group that size works. Do book the date early: in a holiday week the Wednesday and Thursday afternoons fill up fastest. Groups start from 5 children.
How late can we still change the number of children?
Agree that explicitly when you make the request, because in after-school care the numbers are only final on the morning itself. You can hold a date with no obligation first, before you book definitively.
Can we come in the morning?
Not on weekdays. The doors open at 12:00, and at 10:30 at weekends. You fill the morning at your own site and set off after lunch.
Is this also something for a staff training day or a rainy afternoon outside the holidays?
Yes, and often that is the better moment: on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon it is quieter here than during a holiday week. Only Monday and Tuesday are impossible.
Which town is the group coming from?
Transport is often the hardest part of an after-school care outing. So for each town there is a separate page on how to get here with a group of children, and what that costs.
- From Beverwijk — no transport needed
- From Heemskerk — one stop by train, no minibus
- From IJmuiden and Velsen — no station, so minibuses it is
- From Haarlem — direct train, a quarter of an hour
Hold a date without booking straight away
Tell us which holiday you would like to come in, roughly how many children, and who the invoice should be made out to. You get a proposed day and time, and the date is held with no obligation while you get it agreed internally.