While I felt my kids and I had a fun day out, my husband summed it up far better. He said it annoyed him when events made no effort, because lets face it, its just for kids. In hindsight I agree.
Lots of hyped up events, were pretty much just green screens. One example was the Transformers tent. My boys had seen the advert on tv and were really excited. We queued up for about 30 mins while they got to look at the big Optimus Prime truck from behind a rope, then as they got closer the nearest 5 at the front of the line got to play with a few broken transformer toys while they waited. The two army men (random) asked us to choose a picture of a transformer and the boys were told to stand in front of a green screen while they took two photos, and we were told we'd get them in the post in a few weeks. That was it.. The laser tent, had string hanging down from the ceilings and had two men standing in the dark holding a laser pen each. The robot walking around, was nowhere to be seen, the science tent gave you a card to stamp three times, but when you had all three, you pretty much binned it, as you got nothing from doing so.
That was not making an effort. The good however, were the shows, our boys really liked the Mr Men show. There was a great horse walking around and dragon with fire that was very cool.
I got half price tickets which cost me about £50, had I paid double which my friend had, I would have been far more annoyed. Having said that, we parked over the road at London Zoo, and they charged us £50 for parking, so we did in fact pay that.
I wouldnt go again, unless somebody gave me free tickets.