Amid much hype and publicity, the new Sea Life Manchester Centre opened in spring this year. Taken in by the effusive marketing campaign and the huge lines of people queuing expectantly outside the door on weekends, we decided to check it out for ourselves.  We had two objectives – drag Son away from the cartoons he is addicted to at weekends and use our Merlin Annual Passes which were imminently due to expire (this place is run by the Merlin Group).

One of the big benefits of Son’s school is they seem to have slightly different school holidays to everywhere else, so you can visit a place like this and smugly avoid the mass crowds.  This we did.  I had not anticipated though, the sheer number of nursery school trips – the place was swarming with infants running around freely (how they keep track of these little people on trips…