Treasure Island Toys Review

Treasure Island Toys (www.treasureislandtoys.co.uk) has been a popular online store for many parents in the UK since 2008, but as of November 2011 the site became an entirely different sort of online experience.

Treasure Island has created what they like to call a ‘Fun and Party Search Engine’ and is unique in the fact that not only can parents buy toys, furniture and birthday presents from the website, they can now arrange parties and days out for the kids, by finding children’s entertainers, party venues, kids attractions, evening classes, workshops and much, much more - all in one place!

 By entering a postcode or place name, parents can find a whole range of child friendly activities and more which are in their local area.  They then have the ability to refine their search by using hundreds of different keywords ranging from Ballet, Balloon Modelling and Paintball, right through to Peddle Boats, African Drumming, Theatres and everything inbetween.
The website uses the latest technologies to make it super quick and utilises great features like ‘Favourites’ lists, videos of entertainers, date ranges for events, reviews, social networking (Facebook/Twitter/Google+) integration and much more.

The website is also what is known as a ‘wiki’ site, meaning that anyone can add a listing to the website for FREE, quickly and easily by themselves.  So if you are an entertainer or are a parent that knows of any great kids’ attractions and local events in your local area, you have the ability to add them in seconds and let other parents benefit from your knowledge.
With thousands of listings already on the website, and more being added each day, we are confident that Treasure Island is the place for parents to go when in need for some great ideas to keep the kids entertained.

For parties see www.treasureislandtoys.co.uk/parties.aspx
For fun days out see www.treasureislandtoys.co.uk/fun.aspx

I had a bit of a look for our area, which is usually a challenge - most "what's on" type wesbites don't manage to turn anything up around here.  I was really impressed to see that it has about ten results for the area.  There's a few missing, but that's something that will grow in time as people use the wiki function to add their own favourites, and sadly one (my favourite) that closed down a few months ago, but honestly, I was impressed.  I was fully expecting to say "Oh, it's great if you live in London, but there's nothing for the rest of the country", so I shall happily admit I was wrong on that count.

Adding a listing (I did that as well) is fairly easy, though it took me a little while to figure it all out. That said, it's not 8 am yet, and I don't have enough coffee in me.  It's a great resource, and brilliant to be able to find everything in one place, but it's only going to be as good as the listings added to it and maintained accurately, which is always my concern with listing sites.