Kids Pass, explained: is it worth it?
What Kids Pass costs, what the membership currently includes, and how to work out whether it's worth it for your family. A TOSE guide.
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Family outings have a way of pricing themselves upwards. The tickets are one figure online, another at the gate, the popcorn is somehow its own line item, and by the time everyone is seated the afternoon has cost what a weekend used to. Kids Pass exists to blunt that arithmetic, and whether it earns its place in your month depends on maths worth doing honestly.
The membership itself is simple. Kids Pass is a digital family-savings membership, operating since 2014, whose offers can be used across the member's household. It gathers discounts on days out, cinema, dining and UK breaks into one app. At the time of writing, the trial costs £1 for 30 days and automatically continues at £4.99 a month unless cancelled. Kids Pass says you can cancel at any time, and it also advertises an annual membership at £39.99. Access is digital and begins immediately.
What the discounts amount to varies by category, venue, ticket and date. Kids Pass currently advertises savings of up to 56% across its wider range; its join page shows figures such as up to 51% on theme parks and up to 48% on cinema tickets, though individual listings and promotional pages can show different maximums. Those are maximum advertised savings, not the discount every member receives on every booking. Current listings include familiar cinema chains and family attractions: Cineworld, Vue, ODEON and Showcase among the screens, Flamingo Land and Pleasure Beach Resort among the days out. Participating venues, ticket types and savings change, so the listing you'd actually use is the one to check before planning around it.
Dining offers can include percentage discounts and occasional kids-eat-free promotions, depending on the restaurant and the current listing. Redemption varies too: some offers involve buying discounted tickets through Kids Pass; others use a code, a link or an in-person redemption method, and each listing explains what to do. Kids Pass also advertises member competitions, selected Member Days at attractions, and included access to Global Hotel Pass.
Running the test properly during the trial
A trial answers the question only if it is pointed at a real month. The mistake is to browse the app, find the savings impressive in the abstract, and let the renewal decide by default.
Start from the diary rather than the listings. Write down the outings already likely in the next four weeks, the cinema trip, the half-term day out, the meal after the match, then look for those specific things in the app. The figure that matters is the saving on outings already in the diary, not the saving on an attraction two hours away that the membership has made briefly appealing.
Check three details on any listing you intend to rely on. Whether the offer covers the ticket type you actually need, since adult, child and family tickets are often priced differently and an offer may apply to one and not another. Whether it applies on the day you can go, including weekends and school holidays. And how it is redeemed, since an offer bought through the app behaves differently from one that issues a code or requires showing something at the door.
The renewal is the part that catches people
The trial converts automatically. That is stated up front rather than hidden, but automatic is still automatic, and a month passes quickly.
The practical answer is to put the decision in the calendar on the day you join, two or three days before the trial ends, rather than trusting yourself to remember. If the month produced one qualifying booking that comfortably exceeded the monthly fee, the arithmetic has answered itself. If the month produced no useful saving, cancel before renewal. You can reconsider membership when the family diary changes, though the offer available then may differ.
Who it tends to suit
The households that get value are the ones already spending on the categories covered: regular cinema, paid attractions, chain dining, UK short breaks. For those households, a qualifying family booking may cover the monthly fee, depending on the live offer and ticket mix.
The households that do not are equally easy to describe. If your outings are mostly free, the park, the beach, the museum with no admission charge, or if they cluster into one week of the year rather than spreading across it, a monthly membership is being paid for months in which it does nothing. Annual membership only changes that arithmetic if the usage is genuinely spread.
So, worth it? At £4.99 a month after the trial, the arithmetic is uncomplicated: compare the saving available on an outing you were already planning with the monthly fee. A single qualifying family booking may cover it; a household that rarely pays for attractions, cinema trips or other eligible outings may save very little. The £1 trial offers a relatively inexpensive way to run that test against your own diary, with one thing kept in mind: it renews automatically unless cancelled, so make the decision before the thirty days do.
TOSE partners with Kids Pass and may earn a commission if you join through our link. *(Add "This does not affect the price you pay." only once pricing parity on the tracked route is confirmed.)*
You can check the current Kids Pass trial and membership options through TOSE here. *(Upgrade to a cashback/member-offer close only if the commercial record confirms one.)*