Early birthday ninja warrior

Miya turns 11 next month.  For her birthday activity she wanted to try out the ninja warrior course at Jump, so that's what we did yesterday.

(With Mulan starting school in a couple of weeks, we had to do the birthday event early.)

Jump is a huge building full of trampolines. That's lots of fun in itself, but what's really awesome is the ninja warrior course tucked away in the corner.

If you're wondering what a ninja warrior course is, the one we did was a little bit like this, except without the water and the dynamic jumps.  But the essential obstacles were all there, and we had 12 to get through.  (Here's someone's home video from five years ago -- it all looks the same as what we did.)

We booked in advance online, paying $19.50 each for one hour (Mama decided to watch, not participate).

After a brief warmup of jumping, Mulan, Miya and I got stuck into the ninja course.  There's a children's version of the course, but we all went for the adult one (all over 150cm), trying out each of the obstacles first before doing a timed race.

Miya raced first, and successfully completed all 12 obstacles in 5min 30sec.

Mulan completed six of the 12 obstacles in 5min 17sec.  (In practice she did two other obstacles, but was too tired to get them in her full race.)

I completed 11 of the 12 obstacles in 3min 52sec.  (I didn't attempt the cannonball alley obstacle, as my golfer's elbow injury is still too sore for gripping hard.)

Finally, we finished off with some more trampolining.

Our thoughts?

The compulsory non-slip jump socks (for $2.50) were great for the trampolines, but were terrible on the ninja warrior course.  On the ninja warrior TV show everyone wears shoes on the course; we have no idea why Jump requires everyone to wear socks.  My feet slipped inside my jump socks, making some of the obstacles dangerous.  As a result, I had to hold back a lot, especially with the warped wall obstacle.

A few of the holds were loose and spinning -- not sure if it was intentional or not well maintained.  The stop button on the timer was broken.

Overall, it was lots of fun, and definitely well worth it (though it's just a one-off for us and we won't go regularly).  A great family birthday outing for Miya!