About this guide

Map apps answer where a playground is. They do not answer the questions a parent actually has thirty minutes before leaving: is there shade over the equipment in August, can a two-year-old bolt for the road, is there a restroom when you arrive, and is any of the equipment scaled for the age you are bringing.

That information exists. It is scattered across thousands of individual visitor accounts, one sentence at a time, in no particular order and with no way to filter it. This guide reads those accounts park by park and records what they say in a form you can sort.

Each place is identified from public mapping data, then matched against municipal park boundaries so it carries the name people actually use. Visitor accounts for that place are read, and statements about specific conditions are separated from general impressions.

Every attribute we publish carries three things: how many separate accounts support it, how confident we are, and the date it was last checked. Where accounts disagree, we say so instead of picking whichever reading is tidier. A play area described as shaded over the seating but exposed over the equipment is recorded as partial shade with that split spelled out, because that distinction is the whole point.

We do not fill gaps with assumptions. If nobody has mentioned whether a playground is fenced, the entry says so and asks you rather than guessing from what is typical.

We do not reproduce visitor reviews. Every description on this site is written by us from what those accounts collectively report. If you want to read the original accounts, the mapping services that host them are a click away.

We do not rank places against each other. A park that suits a toddler in July is not the same park that suits a nine-year-old in November, and a single ordering would hide that.

Conditions change. Fences go up, splash pads close for the season, equipment gets replaced. If an entry is out of date or wrong, tell us what you found and we will re-check it. Corrections from people who were recently on site are the most useful thing we receive.