A Day Out at Monopoly Lifesized Junior

[Ad- gifted experience] When it comes to game night, our household loves trying out new board games and spending time exploring some of our favorites. We’ve spent a lot of time playing new types of board games, but often ditch the classics like Monopoly. With that said, Dann and I had both played “local rules” versions of Monopoly and are always interested in new ways to experience classics – so when we heard about Monopoly Lifesized Junior, we were curious!

Monopoly Lifesized has appeared in central London, offering a few different boards for people to go and explore. There is a classic version, a London-specific board, a board that contains Mr. Monopoly’s vault, and Monopoly Junior, which is the only board aimed at younger children. The other three are for adults only. Monopoly Junior is really an event for kids – with not a lot of parent interaction, but it’s one of those magical events that has so much going on, that younger children are sucked into the fun, games, and magic of being in a lifesized board – which is enough to make any parents with them happy.

Let’s start off with what you can do before the game begins! Monopoly Lifesized Junior asks that everyone gets to the venue at least 30 minutes before the game, to allow time for check ins. Once you are there, and verified your COVID safety requirements, you can explore a gift shop which contains t-shirts, board games, mugs, magnets and more. There are free lockers to store your items in (as they do not allow pictures during the game and recommend anything you bring is put away) as well as some fancy looking bathrooms. Everything is perfectly decorated and themed to match Monopoly – even the mirrors on the walls and the decorative Jail cell you can take pictures in. On the other side of the venue, there is a bar and restaurant, with a themed menu of Monopoly themed drinks and foods for you to enjoy while you wait. We ended up ordering some drinks and waiting for our slot to begin.

Once it is time, everyone is lined up where they can read the rules for their games – which is pretty straightforward – before you are ushered into a secondary waiting room. This waiting room has print outs of the rules and builds suspense, really, as you suddenly see Mr. Monopoly appear on the staircase, asking everyone if they are ready and creating a very high and loud start to the game, getting everyone pumped! He then lead us upstairs to the Monopoly Lifesized Junior board, which was huge – as predicted – and amazing. We ended up playing on a quiet night with only three other families, which was pretty excited. After back and forth with Mr. Monopoly, we called for his tokens to appear, and then got to randomly select one of them.

Our family ended up with the Duck token, which is pretty fun! Each of these token are a real life person who will act as your guide around the board. We got our starting money, which Kai was in charge of, and a dice that we took turns rolling, before the game begun! Each round has all of the teams rolling the dice together, then moving to the square they should be on. From there, our token is a big help in what to do! You see, each of the places that can be purchased (or that you need to pay rent at) work as mini-games. You’ll need to complete the mini-games to have a chance to purchase the house that you are at. These mini-games were really, really fun and perfect for the age group we have in our family. Some mini-games included sorting out stuffed animals at the zoo, into the right biome that they’d be in (which had Robin and Amelia heavily asking Kai about animals to figure out where they go), a museum that contained a bunch of hidden dinosaur pieces that the kids had to dig through small beads to find and put together, an ice cream shop that saw them getting different colored buckets and trying to get scoops of ice cream (balls) from the bottom of pipes into the correct bucket, while throwing ice and chocolate scoops (balls) into a bin and a mini-game where they needed to throw various pool floats over a bunch of bungee wires to the other side, while avoiding our token who was trying to stop them!

Whenever we completed a mini-game within the limit, we were able to then chat among ourselves and decide if we wanted to purchase it. If the area was already purchased, we still got to do the mini-game to try and earn a but of money before having to pay the owning team rent on the property. The variety between these mini-games was really nice, and everything was super accessible to the kids! Even places like the GO square had mini-games on them – specifically a tornado room that had money for you to grab – and the outside of the jail had a matching game. At one point, we did end up in jail (something Robin really wanted to do for whatever reason) and it turns out that turn became a disco-dance-party-in-the-jail game, which was probably the best fun we had in these mini-games! Our token had a whole duck-related dance that he walked us through, everyone smiling and dancing a long! At the middle point and end we got to count our money and see the other teams, which was nice, but otherwise didn’t interact with them much, which was fine.

The game itself was quite long, but still felt like it went by fast. By the end, Kai, Amelia and especially Robin were exhausted from all the games, running, counting money, and dancing – which was perfect. As previously mentioned, there wasn’t much for Dann and I to do – which is I guess my only complaint about Lifesized Monopoly Junior. I do understand it is meant for children, but the ticket price is the same for children and adults alike – despite adults not having anything to do with the actual mini-games. I feel that the tickets for adults should be less than children’s tickets, like most children focused events and locations. Otherwise, it’s a really fun day out and is completely different from any other activity we have ever done. We had a really wonderful time and could have never guessed how this event would have been! At the very end of your time, you do get two minutes to run around and take pictures, however your token will end up taking them for you, as there are lots of “no photography” areas of the board, which cannot be photographed!

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!