Celebrity Jungle Challenge

I must confess that I’ve never watched I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here, apart from a few YouTube clips – like the hilarious ones of Princess Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell. So, it was complete news to me when I was planning a visit to The Lowry that I noticed there was also an I’m a Celebrity…Jungle Challenge attraction just around the corner from the theatre.

Since we’d decided to make a weekend of our trip to watch the acclaimed adaption of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and stay in a nearby hotel, I also booked myself and our nine year old son Harrison into the Jungle to take a closer look. Here’s how it went:

We visited the I’m a Celebrity Jungle Challenge at 5pm, partly because we’d travelled over from Leeds but also because the early evening sessions are considerably cheaper than the daytime sessions – costing £42.50 for an adult and child, as opposed to £57.50 during the day. This gave us a three-hour slot to enjoy as much of the attraction as we liked.

Once we were through a seamless check in process and the instructions and safety briefing, we were directed to the first – and simplest – challenge, the Treehouse. Knowing nothing about the TV programme, I can only guess that there is a treehouse in it. In the Jungle Challenge the Treehouse is the least challenging aspect of the attraction. It’s basically a memory test that allows you to earn stars, followed by a surprisingly fast slide. Nine-year-old Harrison enjoyed the memory challenge, but – not surprisingly – preferred the slide.

After leaving the Treehouse we headed to the Jungle Run, which was an obstacle course very similar to the Ninja warrior courses that seem to be springing up everywhere these days. The course was smaller than a typical Ninja Warrior course, but extremely challenging, with three mini-courses each progressively harder than the last. Harrison is pretty agile but struggled on most of these obstacles, particularly the monkey bars. He still really enjoyed trying though, and also enjoyed the fact that another memory game is incorporated into the experience. You basically have to remember a sequence of buttons to press in the right order, which should be quite simple but is surprisingly difficult after you’ve just grunted your way across the obstacles.

The staff had recommended that we try these two challenges first, as they didn’t require a harness. Once we’d completed them, we harnessed ourselves up and headed for The Ascent, an 8-metre-high climbing wall with more stars to collect by scanning them with your wristband at the top of the wall. It was a fairly challenging climb, even if it isn’t the highest wall you’ll find in Manchester. Harrison felt a real sense of achievement when he reached the top, spurred on by encouraging shouts from the staff. Cue high fives all round.

Next, we headed to the Tree Top Trail, which was basically a mini, indoor version of a Go Ape or Treetop Trek. Obviously being indoors it’s nowhere near as high or lengthy as Go Ape, but Harrison really enjoyed making his way around the course and we didn’t have to worry about the fact it was rainy and windy outside. Again, there are stars to collect along the course.

At the end of the Tree Top Trail we headed to Jump the Lights, which is a zipline that traverses the length of the attraction. This was great fun because there are two lines and Harrison and myself got to race each other to the other side. Harrison won of course!

After countless races on Jump the Lights we tried Get a Grip, which after Jungle Run is probably the most challenging obstacle. Get a Grip is both a test of nerve and of grip – hence the name I suppose. Get a Grip requires you to jump from a platform – that I’d estimate to be around 5 metres high – in a leap of faith and grab a punch bag dangling a few metres out from the platform. You need to hold onto the bag for ten seconds to pass the challenge and gain maximum points. Both of us managed to do this and more high fives ensued.

While we were up at Get a Grip we noticed an additional attraction called the Spyrider, which the attraction describes as a “rollerglider” and is basically a rollercoaster style ride that zooms around the roof of the building. At £3 per ride I felt it was worth paying the extra, and we both really enjoyed the experience – plus we got to collect more stars.

There are other ways to collect stars as you walk around the building, like finding hidden stars and scanning your wristband onto them or picking up the Dingo Dollarphones scattered around the building and answering a question.

I’d initially expected to be in there for an hour or two at the most, but we stayed right through until 8pm, or the full three hours. There were very few other people in there and we didn’t have to queue at all. There were even less people as it got closer to 8pm.

 

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