25 Best Indoor Play Centres In Edinburgh and Lothian

A capital city that rains as often as Edinburgh does ought to be good at indoor childhood, and the Lothian list largely delivers. Its top entry is Escape The Past, a five-star escape experience at £15 that trades on the city's genuine surplus of history. Behind it, the register shifts from tourist to local: Edinburgh International Climbing Arena — rated 4.7 — is a vast indoor climbing venue that swallows whole birthday parties, Xtreme Karting Edinburgh covers indoor motorsport at 4.6, and Pitstop handles soft play at 4.5. The Hippodrome Boness brings a lovingly restored cinema to the list at 4.8, one of the more characterful family screens in Scotland. A distinctive Lothian feature is the leisure-centre backbone: Xcite Whitburn and Xcite Linlithgow Leisure Centre both appear, their pools doing quiet wet-day service for West Lothian families. Twenty-four of the twenty-five entries have indoor space. Pricing is nearly all unpublished — three venues of twenty-five — so the £15 escape session is the only figure to plan around, and everything else needs a check.