Every year, our youngest son begs to have a paintball birthday party. Having been to a Grade 1 paintball party a few years back, where parents had to race across the field, running with their hands in the air while dodging bullets, to rescue their screaming kids, our answer has been a resounding “NO!”. This year, however, when the “where do you want your birthday party” discussion began, we figured 10 years is old enough, and to Cian’s delight, agreed on Paintball Heaven.

In the days leading up to the party, Cian had the idea of inviting his two older brothers, with a friend each, to join his team on the big day. I thought it was really sweet of him to want to include his siblings, until Ralph pointed out that both our boys and their friends all happen to be on the Grey High School air rifle shooting team.

And so it emerged that the name of the game is to shoot to win. You carefully select which friends you would like to share your day, and then put them in another team and try to annihilate them. Naturally we did not allow all the bigger boys to join in – it would have been far too difficult to explain to the parents of the 10 year olds!

Paintball Heaven consists of a series of battle arenas set in the bush around the main office. The boys were divided into two teams and had to wear either brown or blue coloured overalls over their clothes. A couple of the kids had clearly done paintball before, and arrived already sporting two sets of thick clothing onto which they layered the overalls – pain free but extremely hot!

Excitement was reaching fever pitch as our marshal, Eugene, sat everyone down, and explained the safety rules, the most important of which was “Do not shoot the marshal”.

Brown and blue teams ready for action

The boys were allocated guns and off they went into the first arena, consisting of various wooden structures and hillocks. I am not too sure what the aim was but there was lots of shooting and one team seemed to be the clear winner. Now that they were warmed up a bit, we made our way to the second arena, which was a field filled with padded blue equipment to hide behind while you tried to shoot the opposing team members. When you get shot, you’re out and once again the blue team emerged triumphant.

Refueling between battles

After refueling the gas and bullets, it was off to the forest arena, where the name of the game was to fetch a flag from the centre of the two teams and return it to your base (or something like that). The parents were shown to an elevated area where we could look down on all the action, and duck down behind some pallets if the need arose. Amidst a flurry of bullets, popping, whooping and screaming, one little guy dashed across the arena, grabbed the flag and raced out and the first round went once again to team blue.

Now that a winning strategy had been formulated – i.e. run as fast as you can and hope you don’t get hit – the second round went really quickly, except the flag bearer went the wrong way and was disqualified. The marshal declared open warfare and a couple of the kids came to hide right in front of the parental pallets. Not a great idea as despite ducking quickly down, some stray bullets hit a few of the moms and dads, and made watching very difficult. I did manage to pop my head up for long enough though, to see the two little guys in front of us literally open fire on one of their class mates below, and shoot him a good few times right in the middle of his back as he howled in pain.

Much to my horror, one of the assassins was my little angel, Cian. When I asked him later why he shot his friend so badly, he looked at me as if I had completely lost the plot, and patiently explained, “Duh! Mom, he was on the other team.”

The triumphant flag winner

We were relieved by the end of the party to have a group of very happy boys, who seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed themselves. A few bruises and splats to show off, but no serious injuries.

I can highly recommend Paintball Heaven to other families. It is well set up and professionally run. The facilities are really comfortable – they have undercover tables where you can rest between games, and a tuckshop with cold drinks and snacks for sale. The pricing is very reasonable, and the owner, Liz, is on hand overseeing everything. Our marshal was fantastic with the kids, and ensured that everybody had fun, and stayed safe.

Watch the video highlights of our day at Paintball Heaven:
(If the video does not display properly on your device, click here to watch on YouTube.)

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