Contenders are most definitely ready, as the big Gladiators Experience is now open in Birmingham - giving all-comers the chance to have a go at TV's toughest fitness challenge. The BBC reboot of Gladiators has been a roaring success in recent years, bringing a whole new audience to the show where members of the public compete against the superhuman strength and skills of the muscular Gladiators stars. Now, everyone can have a go at some of the challenges that you see on screen, without the whole nation watching. Yes, that's where the Gladiators Experience comes in - which is now open across the summer at the Birmingham NEC. As I have a Gladiators-obsessed ten-year-old in our household, he was really excited to go along to try it out for himself. But as I wasn't particularly keen to pull on the lycra myself, I arranged to meet up with some of his school friends so he'd have them to compete against inside the arena instead of me. Click here for the latest on Manchester's food & drink scene, gigs and more in our CityLife newsletter The parents of his friends also decided they were up for the challenge, so we booked the group on a family ticket, which worked out at a price of £40 for each contender. Meanwhile I booked spectator tickets alongside my youngest son who is 6, which cost £20 for adults and £15 for kids. Although he was old enough to take part as a contender, he is not that much of a fan of the show so decided he would rather watch his brother instead. So we got to see experience from both sides of the coin you might say. Here's what we all thought. Walking into the arena was an immediately impressive experience. It really looked like the Gladiators arena that you see on TV, with the adult Eliminator course the first thing we saw. Contenders are all given a wristband with a QR code where you can load up your names and team details, before then going to the locker rooms to get your safety equipment, which is provided free to use during your visit. There's a warm up room next to the changing rooms if you want to have a handle of the famous pugil sticks and video warm ups to get you limbered up and ready. It's then out into the arena to start your challenges. As we had a family group it worked well on most of the challenges to pair people up on Duel, while on The Wall five people went off at one time. It's also important to note that there are Adult and Junior Versions of all the challenges, although I'd urge you to look at the height of your junior contenders - as we discovered that all our youngsters met the requirements to go on the adult Wall, for example, which had a much smaller queue than the junior version. However no under-16s are allowed on the adult Duel or adult Hang Tough. You get just 30 seconds to try and knock your competitor off in Duel though, so you don't need to worry about having to wait too long for that one. There's no set circuit to take, so you simply decide where to start yourselves, so if you wanted to, you could do the Eliminator first for example. But, as I'll explain next, there is a time limit so you do need to have a bit of a plan for your time. Especially if it's a peak time with a lot of people in the arena which it was when we went along on a Sunday afternoon. Yes, there's a 90 minute time limit for Contenders on the arena course. But your time starts only from the moment you first scan your wristband when you enter a challenge. So it's worth considering opting for the biggest queue at the start, as the time only counts down when you've made it the front of that queue, if that makes sense. The biggest queue, perhaps predictably, is for the Junior Eliminator. We ended up spending half an hour in this queue which we'd left to the end so it did really eat into our time - but there was no way anyone wanted to miss it. We did mention the length of the queue to staff on the way out and they said they were looking at ways to better manage the timings for the Junior Eliminator at peak times to avoid such a big queue. If we did it again, I think we'd probably start by joining the queue for the junior Hang Tough first, as this one takes a while to queue for, then do the Adult Wall, do both the Adult and Junior Duel next (as it was quick) and then Unleash. It's also worth noting there's no time limit on doing the "training course" at the start as far as we could see. So what we did is go on that a couple of more times after our 90 minutes were up as the kids loved racing around it. The kids really took the Junior Elminator in their stride and loved it. I thought it looked pretty tough, even though they were scaled down versions of the Adult Eliminator. They still got to jump over the bars at the start, climbed a rope up to a platform, walked a balance beam, swung across to the cargo nets. To cater for different capabilities, on the next stage you could choose either to go down a zip wire, or slide down on an inflatable section which I thought was a good feature. It was then over the tricky balance beams to try and race up the Travelator to the end. The Travelator is at a much slower speed than the Adult version, so most kids will be able to have a go of it, and then they swing through doors (rather than smash through) to complete it. As for the Adult Eliminator? Well, our friends who did it looked like they'd run a marathon after giving it a go! And one is a personal trainer so I think that gives you a measure of just how tough the Adult version is. While you might have seen lots of photos of the Gladiators stars at the official launch event, don't be heading along thinking you'll be locking pugil sticks with Warrior or Dynamite around the course I'm afraid. The Gladiators aren't taking part in any of the challenges - you go up against other contenders at the arena, or your family who you are with. However, you can meet a Gladiator on selected dates if you're prepared to pay for a Meet & Greet ticket on top of your entrance fee. This costs £35 per child to meet two Gladiators, where you can have photos taken, incluidng one official photo as part of the fee. You can either pre-book this online ahead of your visit, or, if capacity allows, you can buy tokens on the day in the merchandise store to do the Meet & Greets on the day. We had been planning to do this on the day we visited, but there was a mix up on the times so it ended up not happening. At £40 a ticket for Contenders, I'd say it is definitely worth that money. While the fitness challenge part of the day has a time limit of 90 minutes, if you plan it well you will get a full on experience around the full course within that time. It did feel like a real once-in-a-lifetime experience, especially for youngsters who have dreamt of what it is like to do the famous challenges from the TV show. And once the physical element is done, there's no time limit on enjoying the rest of the arena. That includes the Gladiators Vault area, with an exhibition all about the show and also some other fun play areas where you can take loads of fun pictures pretending to do the Duel, run the Gauntlet and play a mini version of Powerball. If you're buying a Spectator ticket as an adult, all I'd say is you might get a bit envious of everyone taking part, so if you think you have a modicum of desire to do some of the fitness challenges, I'd personally say it's worth going for the £40 Contender ticket as well. For junior Spectators, for £15 it's still well worth the money, as my youngest absolutely loved the free play area and also just soaking up all the atmosphere around the course. However, be warned, you might get lots of kiddy please for purchase of merchandise items on your way out. I succumbed to a foam finger for my youngest, and the official Gladiators kit which was £30. There's a full canteen area inside the arena, offering both a casual cafe option with sandwiches and coffees, as well as a restaurant diner with hot food you can order. Be warned though - you are NOT allowed to take any food and drink around the arena - even if you're just spectating. I learned this the hard way after purchasing a coffee and being told I could not walk around with it while I watched the kids. We went in on a 4pm time slot, so by the time we had finished the activities everyone was starving by around 6pm by which point the cafe side had closed. So we did need to order full meals here and what I would say is, it's quite expensive. We opted for the "Gladiator Family Feast" as a meal deal with two adult mains, two kids meals and four soft drinks for £49.95 - with options revolving around a burger and chips or chicken and chips combo. To buy them individually you'd be looking at £16.25 for "Gladiator burger and fries" or £12.95 for the "Little Gladiators chicken strips and chips". It would have been nice to have some healthier food options on the menu, given the ethos of Gladiators revolves around supreme fitness. Indeed the only vaguely healthy option was a fruit bowl that I ordered for my youngest for the princely sum of £3.95 which made my eyes pop out of my head a bit when I saw how small it was.