If you’ve been reading the reviews of the places we’ve visited on our recent trip to Northumberland (especially to The Alnwick Garden and Bamburgh Castle), you’ll note that I mention whether there’s a Max Card discount available. A Max Card is a discount card available to parents of children with special educational needs or disabilities, and/or children who are ‘looked after’ (i.e. in foster care).
We recently got one, as our eight-year-old has additional needs. Each Max Card is valid for up to two years, and offers discounts to various attractions across the UK. The discounts vary – sometimes it allows free entry for the child, or it may be 25% off. The aim of the card is to make fun family days out more financially accessible to families with children who have additional needs, or who are being looked after. Having a child with additional needs can incur additional expenses – we recently paid out £400 for one of our eight-year-old’s assessments – and so being able to have discounted days out is helpful. It also offers good experiences for looked after children who may have experienced trauma.
Where you can use your Max Card
The list of venues is quite extensive. Many (but not all) National Trust properties are on there, and locally to us is Eureka, the national children’s museum. Whilst we were in Northumberland, we were able to get discounts on three of the places we visited. As well as museums and zoos, there are discounts available at places like Go Ape, theme parks and Haven resorts. All of the Merlin sites are included too, such as the Sea Life Centres, Warwick Castle and Alton Towers.
The discounts available vary by venue. In some places, it’s a percentage discount, whilst others may allow a certain number of people in your party to go in free as long as at least one full price ticked is purchased.
It’s worth noting, however, that most places will only accept a Max Card if you buy tickets on the day in person – many will not offer the discount if booking in advance online.
How to get a Max Card
Because of the eligibility criteria, you can’t simply order a Max Card online. Instead, they’re are available through a local distributor, which is usually the local authority or a charity. For Calderdale, where we live, the distributor is the charity Unique Ways, which supports parents of SEND children. There’s a £6 administration charge to collect the card, but we have already saved far more than this on our Northumberland holiday alone. It has also meant that we could join Unique Ways as members, and access their workshops and training courses, which I hope will be helpful to us in future.
