Have I mentioned that our children wake up early? Our children wake up so early, so don’t be surprised if a few of the reviews we write feature trips to uncrowded cafés: it’s often easy to get a table when you turn up before 9am…
Yesterday was the last day of our Christmas trip home, so by 8.15am we walked and scooted down town to see if we could find a place to while away half an hour with a tasty beverage.
Focal Point was open, which was wonderful news! We parked the scooters and ventured inside. Focal Point is Feilding’s only cinema, and it’s brilliant: super comfortable, with lovely sofas to lounge around on while watching. It shows a good mixture of independent and mainstream films, and from what I gather from my Feilding family, it’s very popular. And it has a café, which is open for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and movie snacks.
The kids had already eaten (you have breakfast early when you’re always up by 6.30am), so we just opted for drinks – hence this being a mini review. The all-day breakfast menu offers the only child-specific options, but there is a lot of food to choose from in the cabinets, so junior visitors would be likely to find something they like.
Anyway, we ordered the kids a $2 fluffy each, and asked for them to be chocolatey. They looked great when they came out:
They tasted great too, with a good ratio of fluff to liquid (a cup 90% full of fluffy, with no actual drink, tends to be a bit of a let-down). The kids got stuck in:
Later, Joe decided that his drink was a bit too hot (I think it was probably fine, but that’s four year olds for you…), so we asked for cold milk and were given a large jug of it for free – enough to just about give the kids another drink each.
I had a hot chocolate, my husband had a flat white, and my mother-in-law had a cappuccino, and everybody was happy.
I did a swift recce of Focal Point during our visit, and didn’t spot any high chairs, but there were a couple of the kind of cushion-based booster seat things that enable small children to sit comfortably (and relatively securely) on a grownups’ chair. There are two seating areas: one near the entrance, by the counter (where we sat); and one further in the cinema, near the actual screening rooms. Of the two, I’d say that the second space is probably a good spot if you’re visiting with babies or toddlers – less chance of them causing mayhem (although very loud babies and toddlers might disturb film-watchers), and more space to park your buggy. Both spaces had boxes of children’s books, but I didn’t see any toys.
There were two unisex loos, one of which was a disabled loo, but no changing table. This is a bit of a shame – there’s definitely enough space for a fold-down wall-mounted table in the disabled loo. There were paper towels in the loos – hurrah!
After I’d scoped the joint and we’d all finished our drinks, we happily walked and scooted home.
Focal Point was the perfect spot for a quick visit on a sunny Feilding morning. Although the child-friendly elements are fairly limited at the moment, it would be easy to remedy this, by:
- Installing a changing table in the loo;
- Providing one or two high chairs (or putting them in a more prominent position, if there are some available already); and
- Adding one or two child-oriented lunch options to the menu.
After publishing this review it was wonderful to receive feedback from Megan at Focal Point, addressing the points I’d raised above! I can now confirm the following:
- There is a changing table available: just ask one of the friendly staff members for help to access it as required;
- Those strap-in cushion-based booster seats I mentioned earlier in the review serve as a substitute to high chairs, and work well for even the wriggliest of babies (and we did use similar strap-in seats for our kids when they were big babies/young toddlers, so I can vouch for this approach); and
- There is a separate children’s menu – again, just ask the staff members for help!
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