Somebody had to actually check.

How we research

Every price, schedule and class name comes from the provider's own website, read by us and recorded with the page it came from. If a studio doesn't publish a price, we say so rather than guessing — a listing with no price is more useful than an invented one.

Party venues get read the same way, but there is more to read: what a package includes, how many children the price covers, whether adults are charged, the deposit, the cancellation terms. Those rules and the price are checked separately and carry separate dates, because a venue can change one without touching the other — so a package shows the older of the two rather than the flattering one.

We re-check the data monthly. Pages carry the date they were last verified, and a page whose research has gone stale says that in plain language instead of pretending.

Where the numbers come from

• Prices and schedules — the provider's own site, always. Never a directory, never an aggregator.
• Party rules — the venue's own party page, linked from every card, so you can read the rule we read. Where a venue publishes no price at all, we say so and show what a comparable party costs elsewhere, named and attributed, rather than inventing a figure for it.
• Ratings and photos — Google Places, shown with the photographer credited and linked, and refreshed monthly. We publish the star rating and review count only; we don't reproduce review text.
• What locals say — public local discussion, kept visually separate from provider facts so you always know which is which.

What we deliberately don't do

Nobody pays to be listed, and nobody can pay to rank higher. “Hoby Picks” are chosen from the data — cheapest way in, best one-off, most beginner-friendly — and the reason is stated on the card. We take no bookings and no commission; the links go straight to the studio or the venue, and a party price is worked out for the group you enter rather than quoted to us by anyone.

We never read a blank as a zero. A venue that doesn't publish a maximum party size is shown as not saying, never as one that fits your group; a package with no published price is shown as needing a call, never as free. That is the rule most likely to make a page look emptier than a competitor's, and we keep it anyway — the alternative is a number we made up, which is the one thing that would make the whole site worthless.

We also leave pages out. If a city and hobby has nothing real to say — no classes, no prices, nothing but a business name — there is no page for it, because a page that wastes your click is worse than no page.

We will get things wrong

1317 businesses change their prices and terms constantly, and we re-check monthly, not daily. When you spot something stale, tell us — we verify it against the studio's site and fix it. If you run one of these businesses, claiming your listing is free.