The Jungle is hard to miss as you're barrelling down Wynnum Road because a real airplane appears to have crashed into its facade. If Indiana Jones happened to be on board at time then he would find himself at home at this elaborate and ingenious kids' indoor play centre in Tingalpa.
Occupying a huge warehouse space, the Jungle has different attractions all with separate pricing. You can drop in for an hour and just do one or two, or buy a package and stay half the day. There's a licenced mezzanine restaurant and downstairs café, so you're sorted for lunch, coffee or snacks, and the bar is open on weekends too.
So what's on offer? The centrepiece here, and the place where your little monkeys will likely spend the most time, is the Jungle Time Playground. You know those soft play mazes they have at Macca's and shopping centres? Think one of those but amped up to 11 or 12. It's flippin' huge: at least four stories of ropes, tubes, stairways and twisting slides. Perhaps its most unusual feature is the central atrium where hundreds of squishy blue balls pop noisily out of an air-powered vessel and gather on the floor. If you grab a few and ascend to the third level, you can put these into pipe guns and fire them at people and objects below. Frantic! Fun!
Abutting this is the Jungle Jump – a massive inflated pillow designed to catch you when you take a leap of faith from one of three levels. Acrophobics need not apply. Jungle Canopy takes an idea often seen in actual jungles or rainforests – a zipline park. It has you safely hooked up while you take on a number of obstacles about 15 feet above the floor. Similarly the Hawk is an electric flying fox that has thrill seekers strapped into a harnessed chair eight metres up and takes them on 140m journey snaking above and around the premises.
The Gorilla Warrior Ninja Course test your skill at swinging from rope to beam – the floor isn't lava luckily, but padded foam. And Tribal Climb is a complete indoor rock climbing experience with harnesses and auto-belay system so that kids can safely scale quite high walls. There's also a Junior Parkour circuit, and a Cub's Junior Play pen for toddlers.
In January 2023 the Jungle opened its Mini Golf Safari offering. This 16-hole putt putt has an exotica/pirate treasure theme with obstacles including a carved totem poles, a skull fountain, giant snake, jeep and a pond complete with a special pole for fishing out your ball when you inevitably misjudge the shot and end up in the drink. Expect weird scenes inside the goldmine when you get to hole 14.
Time Out visited on a school holiday Sunday when the Jungle lived up to its name, with munchkins having the time of their lives every way you looked. Some attractions require that you book ahead, and on your first visit be sure to arrive with plenty of time to check in and sign the waiver.