Panthers Penrith With Kids | Family Weekend Guide

Aqua Park. Image courtesy Panthers Penrith

Everyone pitches Penrith as the gateway to the Blue Mountains, but a stay at the Panthers Entertianment Precinct with kids means it’s also the gateway to big adventures.

Taking a teen for a weekend away requires a completely different holiday strategy. Scenic lookouts are suddenly “just rocks”, historic villages are apparently something people endured before Wi-Fi and suggesting a leisurely bushwalk makes the younger of my teens look at me like I’ve just announced the family is joining a cult.

So when I told her she could bring a friend for a weekend in Penrith, I purposely skipped the whole gateway-to-the-Blue-Mountains, scenic-Nepean-River pitch and led with the important stuff… skydiving, wakeboarding and zombies.

Our base was Pullman Sydney Penrith, right in the middle of The Panthers Entertainment Precinct, under an hour from the Sydney CBD. My plan was simple enough. Park the car, keep the teenagers entertained and see how long it took before somebody announced they were bored. As it turned out, that announcement never came. Which was when I started to suspect Panthers might actually be a cult. Not in a sinister, hand-over-your-worldly-possessions kind of way. More in the hang about for 48 hours, and you’ll find yourself emotionally invested in the place sense. And given the devotion of some Panthers supporters, I suspect they would consider that a perfectly reasonable description of membership.

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Panthers Entertainment Precinct

Panthers Precinct.

Panthers World of Entertainment is one of the largest licensed clubs in the country, and over the years the Western Sydney institution has grown into a genuine entertainment precinct rather than just a club with a bistro. These days it’s home to Aqua Golf, an indoor skydiving centre, a full cable wake park with its own kids’ club, an amusement arcade, more than a dozen restaurants and bars and Penrith’s first five-star hotel, which sits right in the middle of it all. For families, that density is the whole point. You’re not driving between activities, you’re not researching where to eat each night, you’re just walking from one thing to the next.

Aqua Golf at Panthers Penrith

Aqua Golf © Aleney de Winter

We kicked things off at Aqua Golf, where you hit balls from the edge of a lake towards floating targets. It’s golf stripped of most of the things that can make golf feel like work, like walking, and there’s no need for a handicap, fancy outfit or any actual golfing ability. You just grab a club, a bucket of balls, pick a target and start swinging. The girls immediately turned it into a competition because apparently even a casual hit at a floating target requires a winner. I was not that winner. Though I didn’t expect to also be beaten by the four-year-old in the next lane.

Aqua Golf worked well for a first activity because it was easy-going enough to settle everyone into the weekend without requiring a whole afternoon. We had a laugh, tried to hit the targets and moved on when we’d had enough, although the girls were having such a good time taking the piss out of each other’s golf swings that the moving on bit wasn’t particularly urgent.

Most importantly, they were doing something together. No phones, no complaints about being bored and no requests to go back to the hotel. In fact, I was feeling so optimistic about this whole teenage weekend experiment I shot them into orbit.

Indoor skydiving at iFLY Downunder

iFly Downunder © Aleney de Winter

Well, not literally. But they were sent skywards. iFLY Downunder puts you inside a giant vertical wind tunnel and lets you fly without a plane or parachute, just a column of air standing between you and the laws of gravity.

There was a briefing, followed by helmets, goggles and flight suits. The girls looked kind of crazy in matching death row orange, particularly once the goggles had squashed their faces into something vaguely Muppet adjacent. The second they stepped into the tunnel, though, none of that mattered. Their instructor worked with them one at a time, helping them find their balance before gently taking them higher. There were nerves at first, of course, but they got the hang of things within minutes, and I could see the exact moment when the nerves gave way to huge grins as they realised they were actually flying.

By the time they came back down to earth, everyone was hungry.

Where to eat at Panthers Penrith

Marcel Bar & Bistro. Image courtesy of Panthers Penrith

We headed to Tori Cafe & Bar at Pullman for lunch, where a wagyu burger did the job of restoring enough energy for the next round of fun. Travelling with teenagers has taught me that food isn’t really a break from the itinerary. It is the infrastructure holding the itinerary together.

The good thing about Panthers is that food is never far away, and there is a ridiculous amount of it. You can go from burgers and seafood to steaks, hot pot, noodles and pizza without ever having to move the car, which is particularly useful when everyone is hungry at a different time and nobody can agree on what they want.

We had dinner at Marcel Bar & Bistro at The Pullman the first night, working our way through five fabulous courses, from crispy prawns with XO aioli and creamy burrata to sweet potato ravioli and a dessert that disappeared rather quickly. The food was excellent, and it was nice to sit somewhere that felt properly grown-up without the girls feeling as though they’d been subjected to a formal dinner.

Dinner at Marcels at Pullman Sydney Pentrith © Aleney de Winter

The following night we tried Alexander’s at Panthers, which turned out to be one of the surprises of the weekend. It’s a lively tapas and cocktail bar with live music, and our singer was so good that even the teenagers were properly listening instead of disappearing into their phones. We ordered a stack of tapas-style plates and proceeded to demolish them while the music carried on around us. It was the kind of place where dinner felt like part of the night rather than something you had to sit through before getting on with it.

There are plenty of other places to eat around the Panthers precinct too, from Kelly’s Bar + Kitchen and CJ’s Crab Shack & Grill to Tang Hot Pot, Five Guys, Italian Street Kitchen, Zen Noodle Bar and Brisket Boys. You could easily stay for a few days and eat somewhere different every night. And then there’s Harry’s Café de Wheels just outside the entrance, ready for the inevitable late-night pie and chips emergency. Because we all have those, right?

Five-star comfort at Pullman Sydney Penrith

We’re staying at Pullman Sydney Penrith, the region’s first international five-star hotel, tucked right into the Panthers precinct, with the club itself only a few minutes’ walk away. The building is curved and glass-heavy, designed to echo the nearby Nepean River, and inside it feels polished without being precious. Our room is properly spacious, with big, ridiculously comfortable beds that feel particularly good after a day spent being dragged around on boards. And the staff… well, they’re all absolute sweethearts!

The hotel has two dining spots, Marcel Bar & Bistro and Tori Café & Bar, plus a seriously well-equipped gym and a cedar sauna for anyone who has somehow still got energy left. There’s also 24-hour room service, which feels like a very sensible five-star amenity when you’ve spent the day getting wet, muddy or airborne.

There’s something reassuring about arriving back at a five-star hotel looking like you’ve been through a washing machine and nobody batting an eyelid. Two soggy, lake-scented teenagers wander through the lobby and the staff barely blink. Breakfast at Marcel is excellent too, with plenty of choice and enough substantial food to fuel another day of questionable decisions.

And then there’s the location. We could spend the day in the water, wander back to the hotel, shower, eat brilliantly and be in bed, without having to fish for the car keys once. For a family weekend, that feels pretty close to perfect.

→ Check current rates and availability at Pullman Sydney Penrith

Cables Wake Park at Panthers

Ready for more adventure, the girls took on Cables Wake Park, which caters to everyone from total beginners to experienced riders training on the bigger of its two lakes. Neither girl had wakeboarded before, but their instructor was patient and encouraging, having Marlo up and riding on her first attempt, cue 30 minutes of thoroughly unearned confidence that lasts right up until they move over to the bigger lake and she goes down face first. Three times. So she downgraded to kneeboarding, fell off that too, then gave bellyboarding a crack. By then falling had basically become the sport. But it turned out faceplanting is her vibe because she was keen to do it all over again.

Which means we’ll be back, especially in summer when the weather warms up and Cables adds its Aqua Park to the mix. The enormous floating obstacle course is packed with inflatable slides, climbing walls, jumping pillows and various things seemingly designed purely to be bounced on, scrambled over or launched off. Pretty much heaven for a teenager who considers falling into water a perfectly good way to spend an afternoon.

Getting their FREAK on at Panthers

We finish the weekend with FREAK, because apparently the appropriate response to a weekend of wakeboarding, skydiving and generally throwing ourselves around is to get chased by zombies. FREAK is an immersive VR venue tucked inside the iFLY building, with free-roam games, VR escape rooms, laser tag and arcade-style experiences, all with 4D effects that make it considerably easier to forget you’re standing in a room in Penrith. The girls disappear into the virtual world and emerged comparing zombie kill counts, convinced they were the queens of zombie annihilation.

Then we made the mistake of going into Timezone. Or, more accurately, they told me they’d just have a quick look. There were driving games, shoot-em-ups, old-school arcade favourites and enough flashing lights and machines dispensing tickets to keep two teenagers occupied for considerably longer than I planned. They got competitive, obviously, collecting tickets and comparing scores while I stood there wondering how a quick look had somehow turned into an hour.

This was probably the right way to end the weekend, though. By that point we’ve done the big-ticket adventures, eaten extremely well and spent most of the weekend trying stuff none of us had done before. The last few hours were simply theirs. No itinerary, no rushing off to the next activity. Just zombies, arcade games and two BFFs having fun together.

Panthers provides a perfect weekend escape

The case I keep making to other parents when they ask how the weekend went is that Panthers solves the problem most family holidays run into… too much time spent getting somewhere, not enough time spent doing anything once you’ve arrived. It compresses genuine adventure, five-star comfort and properly good food into one walkable precinct, under an hour from the Sydney CBD, with the added bonus of sitting close to Western Sydney’s new international airport for anyone flying in rather than driving.

And for families with teenagers, it offers something that’s genuinely hard to find elsewhere… activities that are challenging rather than childish, enough independence that they’re not glued to a parent’s side, and enough shared moments that it still feels like a family trip rather than a drop-off.

I came home having done far less falling than the girls and far more watching than I expected.But I’d also somehow become the person suggesting we come back, which was mildly concerning given I’d started the weekend wondering whether this place was a cult. Turns out it might be. And one I’m quite happy to join.

Panthers Entertainment Precinct – need to know

Getting there: Panthers is roughly 50 minutes’ drive from the Sydney CBD, with train stations at both Penrith and Kingswood nearby if you’d rather not drive at all.

What to book ahead: iFLY and Cables Wake Park sessions are worth booking online in advance, particularly on weekends.

An award-winning travel writer and photographer, Aleney de Winter was fresh from school when she first set off to explore the far reaches of Australia with a two-man tent and a beaten-up Kingswood for company. Three decades, and two kids later, and she's still on the go, with her itchy-footed offspring in tow.