Swingers West End Mini Golf: £12 Before 5pm on Weekdays

Swingers West End sits at 15 John Prince's Street, a one-minute walk from Oxford Circus, and it charges £12 a head for a nine-hole round of crazy golf on weekdays before 5pm, rising to £15 at peak times. That gap matters if you are hunting for mini golf in central London on a budget. The venue is styled as a 1920s British seaside, with two indoor courses, street-food counters and Carnival games under one roof.

Swingers did not start as a polished West End venue. According to its own about page, it began in 2014 as a pop-up in Shoreditch, founded by Matt Grech-Smith and Jeremy Simmonds, who wanted crazy golf, cocktails and good food in the same room. The first permanent venue followed in 2016, and the brand has since crossed the Atlantic, with sites in Washington, D.C., New York City, Las Vegas and Boston. In London, the website now lists only one address: this West End room.

The design brief leans hard on nostalgia. Instead of neon arcade styling, you get pier-end bunting, striped kiosks and the slightly faded glamour of a seaside promenade. It is a deliberately grown-up take on the putting holes many Londoners remember from seaside towns, and the venue pitches itself as the Home of Rivalry: its own site jokes about the quiet player who suddenly becomes the master and the friend who always insists on a rematch.

There are two nine-hole courses, and the venue lets you choose your rival rather than your hole count. Big Wheel is the busier, more traditional layout, full of moving obstacles, jumps, bumps and loop-the-loops. Meteorite is the trickier pick, with a launch-pad theme and holes built to spin your ball off line. First-timers tend to enjoy Big Wheel more, while groups who already know each other's handicap usually ask for Meteorite.

Caddies work the course rather than just the front desk. Their job, as Swingers describes it, is to offer advice and, more usefully, bring drinks so you never have to walk back to the bar. There is an exclusive course menu for that, and each hole has a spot to rest a glass. At the end, a 3D photo podium waits for the winner's pose, which is either a highlight or a punishment depending on the score.

The booking system confuses plenty of first-time visitors, so it is worth reading twice. When you buy a ticket you pick a 30-minute time slot, but that slot is not your playing time. You need to arrive at least 15 minutes before it starts, and staff then allocate a tee-off time somewhere within that half hour. The earlier you check in, the wider your choice of tee times, so arriving twenty minutes ahead is the smart move.

Online tickets are released one month in advance, a day at a time, and they are non-refundable and non-changeable. Swingers will move a booking to a future date if you ask more than 48 hours ahead, but requests inside that window are refused and no-shows are not refunded. If your group is the kind that changes plans on Thursday night, book the cheaper weekday slot rather than a prime Saturday one.

You do not need a golf ticket to come in, which is unusual for a London crazy golf bar. The street-food line-up includes Patty&Bun burgers, Breddos tacos and World Famous Gordos pizza, and there is no entry fee if you only want dinner and cocktails. That makes Swingers a workable Plan B when the restaurants around Oxford Circus are full on a Friday and your group is still debating where to eat.

Packages bundle food and drink vouchers with golf, starting from £31 per person, and you collect the vouchers on arrival before redeeming them at the bar. A cheaper middle ground is the Swingers Experience: nine holes of crazy golf plus 30 minutes of unlimited Carnival games from £19 per person, available every day. If you are going to play the arcade-style games anyway, that bundle beats paying separately.

Swingers is an adult-leaning venue after dark, but it runs family sessions every day before 6pm. Children are welcome when accompanied by an adult, the venue recommends players aged 7 and over, last entry for under-18s is 5pm, and they must leave the building by 6pm. Parents should treat those cut-offs as firm: staff start clearing the floor of younger guests as the evening crowd arrives.

This half term, from Monday 26 October to Sunday 1 November, the family offer gets a seasonal twist. On Saturday 31 October the daytime sessions add trick-or-treating, face painting and spooky entertainment, plus a family-friendly Halloween film screening on the terrace at 12pm with no special ticket needed. Book that Saturday early, because half-term weekend slots are the first to sell out.

The posted opening hours are Monday 3pm to 10:30pm, Tuesday and Wednesday 1pm to 10:30pm, Thursday 1pm to midnight, Friday 1pm to 12:30am, Saturday 10:30am to 12:30am and Sunday 10:30am to 9pm. The quietest window for golf is a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, which also lands inside the off-peak price. Friday nights are loud, crowded and fun, but tee-off choice shrinks fast.

An honest verdict: skip the Saturday evening slot unless you are celebrating something. The room is at its most crowded, golf queues back up at the busier holes, and you pay the peak £15 for a round that feels more rushed. A weekday afternoon round followed by early tacos gives you the same courses for less money and with a caddie who actually has time to bring that second drink.

John Prince's Street runs north from Oxford Circus toward Cavendish Square, a quiet garden square framed by Georgian and Edwardian buildings. If you arrive early for your slot, a lap of the square is a calmer way to kill ten minutes than queuing at the door. South of the Circus, Regent Street leads down past Liberty's mock-Tudor building on Great Marlborough Street and into Carnaby Street.

After golf, the obvious move is a slow walk east along Oxford Street toward Soho, where the side streets around Berwick Street and Old Compton Street are lined with pubs and bars. If you would rather avoid the shopping crowds, head north instead into Marylebone, where Marylebone High Street has bookshops and cafés that stay pleasant on a weekend morning before your 10:30am family slot.

Swingers West End is at 15 John Prince's Street, London W1G 0AB. Oxford Circus station (Bakerloo, Central and Victoria lines) is one minute away and Bond Street is five minutes on foot. Outside food, including your own birthday cake, is not allowed in.

Plan on arriving about 15 minutes before your slot, then budget extra time for food, because golf is only part of the evening here. The accessibility page and photo gallery on the Swingers site include a 3D tour, which is useful if anyone in your group needs to check the layout first. If your group wants a course to itself, contact the events team rather than booking several public slots, since private course hire is only arranged through them.