Shrek’s Adventure! London, July 2025

We’d booked a few days in London to use our Merlin Annual Passes. Madame Tussauds and Sea Life London Aquarium we’re both checked off the list, so on to item number 3: Shrek’s Adventure.

Shrek’s adventure is an interactive walk through tour in the land of Far Far Away. Each room is a different practical set built to tell an element of the story and led by a different character actor. Warnings now, you may well be asked to take part. If you or your children aren’t comfortable with being picked to speak/dance in front of a room full of random strangers, you may want to avoid it. I’m not a fan, and our eldest definitely wouldn’t have joined in. Elliott though, didn’t care and volunteered himself where possible.

Not cheap for an hours experience. Getting into Shrek’s Adventure costs from £29 per child and £35 per adult. You can also add Character ears (£8 when booking – think they were £12 inside the tour shop) or get a VIP ticket that includes the ears and a photo for £53. They also do multi-attraction offers where you can add other attractions (like London Dungeon, Sea Life or London Eye) for a better price.

We’d booked in for 1.30pm but had a little wait before going in though. First was a wait for the lift where you get to meet Gingy, then another wait but that was just because of waiting for tour groups to move along and the awkward bottleneck points of green-screen photos that you feel compelled to have to take regardless of whether you want them or not. A wait made even more awkward by being stuck by rude people in the queue. Learn personal space people, and stop your kids climbing all over the shelves.

It was probably a good 25 minutes before we actually got into the tour itself but it the summer holidays.

We’re in the ‘tour’ check-in area now, waiting for our tour story to begin. The first actor was the tour director who just checks everyone is ready and comically reads the rules of the tour (like don’t go through random doors and no video/photography, watch the kids, etc). He immediately collared Elliott into answering his checklist of comedy questions (probably because he was closest and waving his teddy crocodile at him!) and Elliott loved answering.

Room 2 was the bus depot. Here, we met Donkey for the first time and we needed to all sing along to add magic power to the bus. Elliott volunteered to help the actor with his slideshow as he told us about our tour and promised nothing bad would happen..

Jump onboard the bus simulator. The bus is stationary, but the screens all around the room make it feel like its moving. Made me feel a bit queasy. Nothing major and I’m quite used to 3D simulators that move, but something about the bus being still and the screen moving threw me a bit. The story here is we’re flying to Far Far Away on a magic bus being driven by Donkey. We’ll meet the Penguins of Madagascar, Toothless and hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon and Po from Kung Fu Panda, before crash landing and killing Rumpelstiltskin’s favourite witch!

We’re off the bus and into the next room where Shrek’s not home, but a newly single Cinderella promises to help. Here I got collared into assisting as she’d seen me on a dating app (not true!) and I had to go into Shrek’s Swamp toilet to find his hidden gold stash. Cue fart noises and exploding toilet shenanigans.

Armed with Cinderella’s gold tooth as payment, the Fortune Teller summons Shrek who tells us he’ll help. Rumpelstiltskin also appears and tells us the witches are on the way to catch us! In here, more dancing was needed and one poor victim had to dance in front of us all and remember the spell for the next room.

Doris, the barmaid, helped us get the spell after some novelty banter (again singling me out as Prince Charming – but I’ll take that). For the spell, we needed some ingredients – Hair from a hero = cue Puss in Boot’s to appear and spit up a furball which one of the kids was in charge of.

We meet Pinocchio next as we need Conscience of a Boy as another ingredient. Unfortunately he’s being tortured so we have a little game show to help him escape. We get his conscience and off to the next room

Off into a hall of mirrors where we got a bit stuck. Either we were lost and trapped for a bit or they just weren’t ready with the next room because we were here for a good 5 mins of walking into mirrors. Eventually we escaped into the next room with apologies from the staff.

Sleeping Beauty introduces us (when she’s awake) to the home of the Muffin Man. You get to see Gingy in the window if you’re standing in the right space, so be nearer the back for that. Gingy unlocks the door and we head in.

We enter the bakery where the Muffin Man helps us conjure the portal spell to get us home, the two children with the spell items step onto the stage and add in theirs. Item 3 was Essence of Ogre but we didn’t have that so… an onion, cause ogres are like onions. They have layers! After Donkey appears and passes over the onion, Elliott stepped up to add it to the cauldron. You do get a bit of a splash if you’re adding the ingredients. The portal opens and we’re away!

Stand in the middle and chant the magic word… Waffle, cause Donkey loves waffles. The walls spin with flashes of colour, Shrek’s face appears, witches surround us. And we get whisked away into the next room.

Rumpelstiltskin has us cornered and trapped in a jail cell. Luckily we’re with Princess Fiona who’s taking charge of the room. Shrek shows up to help us and break us out. We do some shouting and Shrek saves the day! We’re free to head back to London.

And that’s the tour.

On the way out, we get to meet Shrek. Well, a person in a Shrek costume. This is a photo op that you can buy later. The next room is a chair with Gingy on it for another paid photo op. Gingy does interact with you and was chatting to people as they sat with him for a photo.

The last section is a room with some photo ops and games in themed around How to Train Your Dragon, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda. All just statues for you to take your own photos with, but there are a few decent scenes to see.

Once the tour is over you can pick up a photo package. You can choose from the green screen ones from the start, or your pics with Shrek or Gingy. I think packages start from £20 for either one or two photos. We selected the full package which gives you 4 photos, a folder to put them in with activities, stories and more, a magnetic frame with another picture in and all your digital images. This was £30 (or £24 with a Platinum Merlin Annual Pass Discount of 20%), which isn’t bad for the bundle you get and the book itself is a good souvenir.

Exit through the gift shop is standard procedure. In here you could pick up souvenirs, toys and more from all of the aforementioned Dreamworks properties. Plushes, magnets, keyrings, etc. They didn’t have a specific ‘Shrek’s Adventure’ magnet or we’d have bought one, so we skipped through and left.

We were in a bit of a rush anyway as we had to get to the London Eye for 3pm.

Elliott really enjoyed it. He loves Shrek anyway so anything Shrek related is a win. Generally though, there wasn’t a whole lot of ‘Shrek’ in Shrek’s adventure. Yes, we saw some of the characters from the films but their appearances were fleeting. The actors do their job well and the sets all looked fun.

It really isn’t something we’d rush back to do. In fact, I’m not sure we’d ever come back to do it. Definitely glad it was part of the Merlin pass as it didn’t feel like something I’d have been happy to pay £96 for. Glad we did it, but nothing special.

The interactive element is always off putting for me. Trying to enjoy the experience with the threat of being spoken to and made to dance in public isn’t on my bucket list, but seeing Elliott get up and enjoy himself was worth it. And if me making a muppet of myself for a few minutes helps show Evan, who gets nervous of these things, that it’s not that bad, then that’s another small win.

All in all, not my favourite thing.

Find details and booking info on the Shrek’s Adventure website.