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When it launched as a pop up at the tail end of 2016, Ballie Ballerson was pretty much the flagship venue for the then relatively novel kidult trend, that is to say grown adults doing children’s activities, generally while drunk. Ballie Ballerson is a ball pit with a bar, and in the mid ’10s it stood as the apex of the London millennial project – the wildly popular original Dalston pop-up location lasted for six months before begetting a permanent Shoreditch location shortly thereafter.
‘What’s going on with Ballie Ballerson in 2025?’ is not a question you hear asked much. And I don’t mean that to be damning – nobody asks about Dans Le Noir or The Mousetrap, and yet they’re still chugging on.
It’s certainly not a question I had asked, because aside from an obligatory rolling of my eyes when Ballie B launched, it had never occurred to me that I would actually one day go. While technically a millennial, I had a one-year-old when the bar first opened its door, and I think whatever ironic gymnastics you’re doing in your head to justify a night out there is rendered null and void if you’re also somebody who takes small people to actual ball pits as a matter of course.
Then, a couple of months ago, I received an email: Ballie Ballerson, the ball pool for adults, was now letting in children. Not, it should be said, at the same time as any adults other than supervisory parents. But for the duration of the 2025 school summer holidays there are Friday sessions at Ballie: 3.30pm-5pm for ages seven to 12, and 5.30pm-7pm for ages 13-16 (17-year-olds would seem to be the big Ballerson losers here – sorry guys). Tickets are £17.50 for a 90-minute session that includes a mocktail and a flashing LED garland, or £27.50 for that but with bottomless pizza and access to the VIP karaoke room. To be absolutely clear, you cannot buy an alcoholic drink at these times.
As the session wore on, tribes did seem to emerge
I live nowhere near Shoreditch, and had done my best to shield my kids – now ages 10 and 7 – from knowledge of its existence. It’s something they can come to themselves when they’re older, like religion. However, the summer holidays are really very long, Shoreditch is a mere 11 stops down the Windrush Line from me, and the economics are pretty good so long as everyone has more than one pizza.
My first impression of Ballie Ballerson was surprise that there weren’t more balls. At its zenith it played host to three pits and apparently over a million plastic globes. Those days are gone: there’s only one fairly large pit – one has been replaced by a VIP area and the other is now a worksite (I’m not sure to what end). I had relentlessly hyped this thing to my children in an effort to persuade them to leave the house, and there was a degree of reproach about the lower than expected ball volume – but as I said to them, things change. Entropy happens. Get used to it. Not the last life lesson they would learn at Ballie B.
Anyway, kids bloody love ball pools. The pool supervisor told me that adults don’t on the whole spend great lengths of time in the pit, more like five minute stints at a time (for obvious reasons: you can’t drink in there). Children have no such qualms and it was a good 20 minutes before mine first surfaced from the deep sea of white balls, which are given an added piquancy by rainbow coloured lights and a permanent soundtrack of Disney tunes.
Ninety minutes is a long time to spend in a ball pit, and seven to 12 is a pretty weird spread of child ages, running the gamut from kids about to enter Year 3 at primary school, to actual full on secondary school students. As the session wore on, tribes did seem to emerge in the pool: young kids and autistic kids (I have one of each) flopping about merrily together, and a large posse of girls with phones who I assume were at secondary school and who were trying to make TikToks of themselves having a wonderful time. Unfortunately they didn’t want any other kids in their videos, something that led to a mounting state of cold-war tension in the pit as the two parties threw balls at each other with what I can only describe as increasingly uncomfortable intensity.
There were, alas, some tears after my eldest was told off for throwing a ball when he hadn’t thrown a ball. But the Ballerson staff were very nice about it and gave him a sherbert dib dab, which seemed like a fair trade. Mostly he was incensed that the girls were pretending to be nice people having a nice time in a deserted ball pool for the camera, when that didn’t reflect the IRL situation at all. I explained that unfortunately this is actually what most of life is going to be like.
Swings and roundabouts, but the pizza did much to offset the tension, and while I think there probably are actions that could have been taken to make it run smoother – make the younger session seven to 11, ban phones – there’s a strong argument that shoving 20-ish random kids into a ball pit together for 90 minutes is going to result in some tears anyway and that’s okay.
Is Ballie Ballerson still a great place to go in the evening for an adult? I don’t know, and probably never will know. But it comes as no real surprise that Ballie Ballerson, the ball pit for adults, is actually good fun for kids too.
The last Ballie Ballerson kids sessions this summer are on Aug 22 and Aug 29. Book here.
The 20 best activities for kids in London in the 2025 summer holidays.