A child with glasses and a tie-dyed hoodie, seen from behind, with one hand on the steering wheel of a car, looking out through the windscreen at a white car ahead and a glass building beyond, with a screen fixed to the dashboard

Teenager on a Young Driver session.

Before you go

Prices
Free; driving experiences extra (Young Driver from £70, passenger rides from £45 for up to three people); indoor attractions £3 to £15
Open
Daily 10am to 6pm; closed 25 and 26 December
Nearest station
Weybridge (South Western Railway), 25 minutes’ walk; the station is step-free
Plan your journey
TfL Journey Planner, Google Maps or Uber

For families

For neurodivergent visitors

  • Engine noise: the Mercedes-AMG cars on the handling circuit are loud, and so is the Silver Arrows display.

Accessibility

  • Step-free: all three floors have step-free access.
  • Driving experiences: some have health, height or weight limits; ring 0370 400 4000 to ask which car suits the driver.

So Mercedes-Benz World is pretty heavily branded and it’s not easy to get to by public transport, which means I wouldn’t normally include it on this site, but I am including it because they have some really cool activities, which are good for both younger kids (play with the slot racing cars, drive a sit-on toy car) and older kids / teenagers (drive in a simulator, have a real-ish driving lesson in a real full-size car, even if they’re below legal age to drive on the road).

The Silver Arrows stunt driving display (on the final weekend of each month) is fun to watch, and the museum is pretty interesting too - those are both free. The other experiences (driving lessons etc) are paid, from a few pounds for slot cars etc to £70 for the Young Driver Experience (driving lesson) through to hundreds of pounds for the adult driving experiences (fast speeds and offroad, as passenger or as driver). Book before your visit for the driving experiences.

M-B World combines well with Brooklands Museum, because they’re next-door to one another, and they both have a motoring theme. Although it’s a little bit of a trek by public transport, you can get the most out of your travel time by visiting both attractions while you’re in the area. There’s enough to see and do, at both attractions together, to keep a family busy and entertained for a whole day. If your family is keen on cars / engineering then it’s very much worth the trip.

Getting there: this is the slightly tricky part. If your budget will stand it you might want to just get a taxi/Uber from central London. If not then go by train to Weybridge (see our Travelling around London article) and then either get a taxi from Weybridge station or follow this walking map to Mercedes-Benz World (bottom left hand corner of the map). It’s about 1 mile on small roads and footpaths.

The Ultimate Under 17s Experience, from Mercedes-Benz World’s YouTube channel.

Driving and passenger rides

On a Young Driver session, the child/teen sits beside a qualified instructor in an automatic Mercedes-Benz with dual controls, so the instructor can brake too. A parent is allowed to travel in the back seat, and there are CCTV cameras in the car. In our experience the instructors are very well-trained and professional. The drive is on the ‘roads’ for drivers with no licence, marked in yellow on the map below. The 30-minute session (£70) has about 25 minutes of driving after the seat and mirrors are set up, and the hour costs £120. A Young Driver 4x4 hour, also £120, is spent in a G-Class on the off-road course.

A printed map headed Driving Experience Circuits, lying on a table, with a key showing yellow roads for non driving licence holders, red handling circuits and the green tracks of the 4x4 off-road course, labels for the Wet Circle, the Wet Straight and the Dynamic Area, and the Mercedes-Benz star in one corner

The map of the driving circuits, with the roads for drivers with no licence in yellow.

A dark blue sports car with Pirelli and Mobil 1 stickers sliding sideways across a wet track and throwing up spray, with a silver estate car close behind it and both cars reflected in the water

Display drivers sliding two cars across a wet part of the track at Mercedes-Benz World.

The front of a black Mercedes-Benz G-Class, its grille, round headlamp and bumper spattered with mud, parked on a gravel yard beside another black G-Class

A muddy G-Class, the car used on the 4x4 off-road course.

The driver needs good conversational English and shouldn’t drive in flip-flops, sandals or high heels. A camera in the car can record the drive, and you can buy the recording for £30 on the day.

Children too short to drive can ride with one of the professional drivers for 15 minutes, and the price covers up to three passengers, who needn’t speak English. The offroad ride (£45) climbs steep slopes, leans steeply to either side, and goes through water. The Mercedes-AMG ride (£50) goes round the handling circuit in an AMG that can reach 60 mph (97 km/h) in as little as 3.3 seconds. Anyone under 1.35 metres needs a booster seat; ring before you go to arrange one. The drives and rides aren’t recommended in pregnancy.

From the back seat of a car, a driver with fair hair tied back steering along a muddy track whose sides rise steeply, between trees, with a screen fixed to the dashboard

Young driver on the 4x4 off-road course.

Through the side window of a car, a black G-Class with its headlamps on coming down a steep slope paved with stones towards a muddy pool, between pine trees, with a large grey building behind

Another G-Class coming down a steep stone slope on the off-road course.

Weekend displays

Every weekend, classic cars are driven round the handling circuit in the Heritage Display. At 1pm on the last weekend of each month, the Silver Arrows display shows the professional stunt drivers and their cars at full speed.

Inside the building

You can get into the cars on display that have their windows down; staff can unlock the doors. You can’t sit in the ‘heritage’ cars though, which includes Formula 1 cars. The cinema shows a free 20-minute film on the hour and half hour from 10am to 5.30pm. Formula 1 races are shown free in the cinema, when they fall within opening hours.

In Little Learners, 3 to 5-year-olds can drive an electric ride-on car for 10 minutes and get a ‘licence’ at the end, for £7. These little cars are great, our kids both enjoyed it and highly recommend it! Sessions run on the hour on weekdays and every 20 minutes at weekends and in the local school holidays, until 4.40pm.

FastTrax slot-car racing costs £3 for about three minutes and suits anyone from 3. In the Simulator Zone on the top floor, 3 to 10-year-olds can race go-kart-style simulators in Junior Racers for £6, and a 10-minute race on one of the 14 GT-style simulators costs £10. The Grid, an F1 simulator where you can race side by side, costs £15.

Food

The Recharge Café on the ground floor sells cakes and sandwiches until 5pm, and hot dishes from 12pm to 2.45pm. At weekends, on bank holidays (public holidays) and in the school holidays, the Bistro on the top floor serves brunch and lunch from 10.30am to 2.45pm, with views of the tracks, and you can book a table online.

Getting there

Trains from London Waterloo take 30 to 45 minutes to Weybridge. Contactless and Oyster cards can’t be used at Weybridge, so buy a train ticket at the station or online before you get on. From the station, take the Falcon 436 bus, which stops outside Mercedes-Benz World, or get a taxi from the station taxi rank; either takes 10 to 15 minutes. Or walk this route which is about 1 mile. For train tickets, see Travelling around London.