Apex City of Bath Hotel Review With Kids: The Spa Break They Can Actually Join In

If you’ve read any of my hotel reviews before, you’ll know I have one fairly predictable requirement when booking a city break with my daughter.

It needs a pool.

Partly because she loves swimming, but mostly because, as a mum travelling alone with a child, a hotel pool buys you an entire evening’s entertainment without having to drag everyone back out into the city after a full day of sightseeing.

We’ve stayed in plenty of spa hotels together for exactly this reason. Usually, though, the arrangement is pretty standard: she gets the swimming pool, I spend an hour playing mermaids, and we both stare longingly at the hot tub she isn’t allowed in.

The Apex City of Bath Hotel was different.

Ironically, I hadn’t actually booked it as a spa hotel. I knew there was a pool, but I was expecting exactly that: a pool.

What we found downstairs was essentially a mini spa experience that my seven-year-old could actually join in with — although she approached the concept of spa somewhat differently to me.

There were bubbles to lie on, built-in bubble seats, waterfalls, water jets, an enormous bucket you could tip over your own head and hot-and-cold experience showers that my daughter treated with the enthusiasm usually reserved for an actual water park.

And for the first time, I got something vaguely resembling a spa experience too.

No mermaids required.

So, if you’re considering staying at the Apex City of Bath Hotel with kids, here’s what we thought… including the pool, our Premier Balcony Room, the ridiculously convenient location and whether I’d actually pay around £250 to stay there again.

Apex City of Bath Hotel with kids: quick verdict

Best for: Families doing a Bath city break who want a hotel with a pool
Our highlight: The pool and its kid-friendly spa features
Biggest practical win: The ridiculously central location
Room we stayed in: Premier Room with balcony
We paid: Around £250 for one night
Would I stay again? Absolutely

Location: genuinely brilliant with kids

If you’re travelling to Bath with children — particularly if you’re doing it alone — location matters more than almost anything else.

Nobody wants to finish a full day of sightseeing and discover there’s another 25-minute walk back to the hotel with a child whose legs have suddenly stopped functioning.

Thankfully, the Apex City of Bath Hotel couldn’t have been much easier.

Bath Spa train station was less than a ten-minute walk away, even with little legs, and the Roman Baths were around four or five minutes from the hotel. Once we’d checked in, we could basically do everything on foot.

There’s also a One Stop right next door.

Not glamorous, admittedly. Extremely useful when you realise you’ve got no drinks, snacks or whatever other completely essential item your child suddenly requires at 8pm.

For me, this is exactly the kind of location that makes a family city break easier. You’re properly in Bath rather than vaguely near Bath, so popping back to the room during the day doesn’t become an expedition in itself.

Our Premier Room with balcony

This stay came at the end of our little tour around the south of England, and by this point I knew two things:

1. We weren’t going back out in the evening.
2. I wanted to sit down.

So I paid a little extra for a Premier Room with a balcony.

Worth it.

The room itself was huge, with a queen-sized bed and loads of space around it. The larger bed did absolutely nothing to prevent my daughter sleeping diagonally across me, obviously, but at least I had slightly more territory to lose.

There were also some genuinely good little extras.

We had bottled water, decent biscuits rather than the sad individually wrapped ones that taste vaguely of cardboard, robes and slippers, and — importantly — a proper coffee machine with pods.

Mums know.

There was also both a bath and separate shower, which didn’t make much difference with my seven-year-old but is definitely worth knowing if you’re travelling with babies or younger children. Sometimes a bath in a hotel room is the difference between a normal bedtime and an international incident.

We were staying for my daughter’s birthday, and the hotel had left her a birthday card, a little rubber duck and a plate of cakes in the room too.

She was delighted.

The rubber duck obviously came home with us.

And, as always, the robe and slippers were a major event.

My daughter is obsessed with hotel robes because apparently wearing one makes you a sophisticated woman of leisure. She regularly asks for one at home.

I refuse because I know full well it’ll be covered in Coco Pops by Tuesday.

Is the balcony room worth upgrading to?

For us, yes.

The balcony was actually one of the reasons I’d chosen the upgraded room in the first place.

My plan for the evening was essentially: get back from exploring Bath, put our robes on, order pizza and sit looking over the city without having to persuade a tired seven-year-old that leaving the hotel again would be “fun”.

And that’s exactly what we did.

For that alone, I’d pay for the balcony again.

It gave us a lovely view across Bath and made staying in the room for the evening feel like part of the trip rather than us simply giving up for the day.

There are, however, a couple of things worth knowing.

Firstly, ours was incredibly windy.

Obviously, unless Apex has recently acquired control over the British weather, I’m not holding that against them.

Secondly, the balconies aren’t particularly private.

Ours was separated from the neighbouring balcony by little more than some planting, so if both rooms had been outside at the same time we’d essentially have been enjoying one large communal balcony together.

We didn’t see our neighbours, so it wasn’t an issue at all for us.

But if you’re planning a romantic weekend away involving wine, robes and gazing wistfully across Bath, there’s a reasonable chance Dave from the next room could also be there.

One thing I did appreciate as a parent was how heavy the balcony door was. There’s no way my daughter could have casually pulled it open while I was in the shower.

Obviously, you still need to supervise children around balconies, but it was reassuring nonetheless.

The Apex City of Bath Hotel pool: basically a spa break for kids

This was easily the highlight of our stay.

Apex doesn’t really position itself as a full-blown spa hotel, so I’d booked it expecting a decent indoor swimming pool.

What we actually found was far more fun.

The pool itself had spa-style features built directly into it, including two different bubble areas. One allowed you to lie across the bubbles, while another had built-in seating where you could sit with the bubbles coming up around you.

Essentially: hot-tub energy, without putting a seven-year-old in an actual hot tub.

There was a waterfall you could sneak behind, plus another water feature blasting jets directly into the pool.

Then there were the showers.

One was essentially an enormous wooden bucket that you fill with water and tip over yourself.

I interpreted this as a cold-plunge-style experience.

My daughter interpreted it as the greatest invention of the 21st century.

There was also an experience shower where you could choose between icy-cold and tropical warm water, complete with different lighting. We’d seen something similar at Ragdale Hall before, except this time she was actually allowed to use it.

The pool area does also contain a proper sauna and steam room for adults. We obviously didn’t use either with a seven-year-old, although she finally got to peer inside and see what I keep talking about.

She remains completely baffled as to why adults voluntarily sit in extremely hot rooms.

Fair.

Why the pool is so good with kids

What made the whole thing so good wasn’t necessarily any individual feature.

It was that, together, they made the pool feel like an actual experience rather than simply an amenity the hotel happened to have.

To my daughter, it was somewhere between a swimming pool and a tiny water park.

To me, it was the first time we’d stayed somewhere where I felt like I was getting a little bit of the spa experience too, rather than simply supervising an hour-long game of mermaids.

And I think that’s probably the biggest selling point of the Apex City of Bath Hotel for families.

We’ve stayed in actual spa hotels together before, but understandably most proper spa facilities are adults-only. The kids get the pool while you spend the entire time looking over at the hot tub knowing you’re not getting anywhere near it.

Here, the bubbles, water jets and experience showers meant we could actually enjoy some of those things together.

She thought she’d found a water park.

I thought I’d found a loophole.

Everybody won.

Can children use the pool at Apex City of Bath Hotel?

Children can use the pool during the day, with the pool becoming over-16s only after 7pm.

We also found that mornings were much quieter, so if you’re staying with children and want a slightly calmer swim, I’d recommend heading down early.

Obviously, hotel policies and swimming times can change, so it’s worth double-checking the current children’s swimming policy directly with the hotel before your stay.

There’s another side to this that’s worth mentioning too.

If you’ve found this review because you’re considering the Apex for a romantic Bath break rather than a family trip, be aware that during family swimming hours this is very much a family-friendly pool.

And those lovely spa features?

Children also think they’re brilliant.

The bubbles and waterfalls that made it feel like a lovely little spa experience to me made it feel like a miniature water park to my daughter.

She was having the absolute time of her life.

Quietly and serenely enjoying the hydrotherapy features she was not.

So if your vision involves floating peacefully beneath a waterfall while listening to nothing but the gentle movement of the water, I’d probably wait until after 7pm.

Breakfast at Apex City of Bath Hotel

I can’t give you a proper review of breakfast because we didn’t have it.

I’m physically incapable of consuming much more than coffee first thing in the morning and my daughter considers Coco Pops a complete breakfast, so paying hotel-breakfast prices for the two of us usually feels like poor financial planning.

The hotel does serve breakfast — and I could smell the cooked breakfast as we were leaving in the morning — but we headed out instead.

Given how central the hotel is, you’re hardly short of alternatives if you’d rather do the same.

Is the Apex City of Bath Hotel worth the money?

We paid around £250 for our Premier Room with balcony.

There’s no pretending that’s cheap.

It’s definitely towards the higher end of what I’d normally expect to pay for a one-night UK city break and starts creeping into London hotel territory.

But weirdly, I didn’t come away feeling ripped off.

The way I looked at it was that the pool wasn’t simply something we used for half an hour before bed. It became an actual part of the trip.

If I’d paid £30–£40 for the two of us to do a separate swimming or family spa-style activity, I’d probably have thought that was perfectly reasonable.

Then there was the balcony.

Instead of going back out for dinner, we ordered pizza, sat overlooking Bath and effectively got the nice-view restaurant experience without having to put shoes back on.

Add the huge room, birthday touches and a location that meant we didn’t need taxis or public transport once we’d arrived, and the price made considerably more sense.

Would I spend £250 purely for somewhere to sleep in Bath?

No.

Would I spend it again for this particular stay?

Yes.

Is Apex City of Bath Hotel good for families?

I think so — but interestingly, not because it feels like an overtly “family hotel”.

There are no cartoon characters, kids’ clubs or children’s entertainment.

Instead, it has the things that actually made our city break with a child easier: a brilliant location, spacious room, a bath, plenty within walking distance and a genuinely fun swimming pool.

And sometimes that’s far more useful than a children’s activity sheet at reception.

For me, it’s particularly good if you’re doing Bath as a solo parent.

Once we’d finished sightseeing, I didn’t need to find something else to entertain my daughter all evening. We went swimming, got into our robes, ordered pizza and sat out on the balcony.

Minimal logistical effort.

Maximum holiday.

Would I stay at the Apex City of Bath Hotel with kids again?

Absolutely.

In fact, this was probably one of my favourite hotel stays we’ve done together.

The location was brilliant, the Premier Room felt properly spacious, the balcony was worth paying extra for and all the little touches — particularly for my daughter’s birthday — made it feel special.

But the pool is what would bring me back.

We’ve stayed at plenty of spa hotels where my daughter can use the swimming pool while everything remotely spa-like is reserved for adults.

At the Apex, she got the bubbles, waterfalls and ridiculous bucket of freezing water.

I got to sit in bubbles without pretending to be a mermaid.

Everybody won.

The bottom line

If you’re looking for a family-friendly hotel in Bath with a swimming pool, the Apex City of Bath Hotel would be very high on my list.

It’s expensive enough that I’d shop around for the best rate, and I’d definitely consider whether you actually need the balcony upgrade. For our particular trip, though, it was completely worth it.

The combination of the central location, huge room, balcony and unexpectedly brilliant pool meant the hotel became part of our Bath trip rather than simply somewhere we happened to sleep between days out.

And if you’ve got a child who’s forever asking why they’re not allowed in the spa?

This might be the closest you’re getting for a few years.