This post was last modified: Sep 11, 2019 at 9:38 AM by Fun With Despair.

Captain's Journal - Day 3

The events of this day, the third of our voyage at sea, were perhaps counted among the more pleasurable, at least to begin with. Many travels have we made as a crew, and many travels have ended in the utmost suffering. Poles that burn our hands, tires that sink beneath our footsteps, a deluge of suffering that accosted us every time we set out on the path of discovery.

Yet, today, I felt at first, would differ. The wind floated by lazily, and the storms that had battered us in the past had cleared up after what felt like far too long. Indeed, today was peaceful, in much the same way that a break after a hard day of work is. This was our reprieve.

As I saw that woeful black flag cross the horizon though, I knew it was all over. I dropped to my knees and prayed, for I fear that the only journey I shall be making henceforth is one to a watery grave.

...Or something like that anyway. It's a pirate themed park, what else do you people want from me?

Yeah, I know the second picture is really bad but it was dark. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum or whatever. This playground initially caught my eye because, well, how couldn't it? It's shaped like a big pirate ship, that's cool as hell. Who doesn't like pirates, especially as a kid? Compared to the town park from the start, there's a lot more going on here at least, and I think a pirate ship generally provides way more "play" options than a town anyway

The most interesting way onto this park is one of these glider things that previously let me down at the Town Park. Luckily, this one goes about as fast as my finger does on the spambot ban button, so it was actually a lot of fun as far as these things go. Part of this seems to be because the thing has actual angles to it, rather than just being flat. This kind of give that same effect as a zipline where you go rocketing down and it's pretty great.

At the platform at the end of the glider, there's a ledge leading up to a ladder and a fireman's pole, as well as a rope bridge to the left and this little lower gravel pit area in the hull of the boat. I'll get to the other areas soon enough, but I do kind of like how they did this. It feels like this'd be good for pretending to be a pirate, having a below deck type of area like that. Plus, having a gravel flooring to this playground was actually a good choice, because it means you can go dig up booty.

...Which is probably a term I shouldn't be using in this context unless I want to end up on a watch list.

Up the ledge, you have a pretty generic climbing thing, which I basically forgot about ten seconds after I looked at it, and another fireman's pole. Looking down at the bloody stumps that remained of my hands after the last review, I breathed a heavy sigh and embraced it, sliding to the ground and awaiting further agony. None came. Pole was good, don't have any complaints.

This park was just pretty well maintained overall. I don't think it's very new, but it does very notably not suck as much as the last two in terms of general upkeep and structure quality. Probably because it's popular.

There's also this fucker, but it's a pirate ship, I think this actually fits in pretty well.

Heading back down and looking over to the rope bridge, I realized how rare these are these days. It's been a long time since I've last seen one, and I'm willing to be it's because someone thinks they're unsafe. Now, to their credit, as someone who's totally eaten shit on one of these, they're probably right, but that doesn't meant they aren't also fucking awesome.

Past the rope bridge and up the ledge, you've got this rope ladder, which is a little more common nowadays than the bridge, but not by much. I think I like the bridge more, but I'd much rather have these than a generic metal ladder like on the other side. Maybe it's another safety thing, but I dunno, I still feel like safety and fun are on opposite sides of a spectrum sometimes. Within reason anyway.

There's also one of these spiral things but I really don't have anything else to say about these.

Turn to the left here though, and you have the ship's "sail", which is really a big hunk of plastic that's kind of annoying to get under. I feel like I've made enough jokes where I pretend that kids weren't the intended audience, but this thing's kind of low enough to where I feel like even kids are going to have to duck a bit unless they're really little. The ship railing motif on the wall there is pretty nice at least.

Up a ledge from here and you have another meme wheel, which I can't feel mad about because of theme, as I've already said. Standing up here as a kid and pretending to be the captain would actually be pretty cool.

There's also the slide, which despite being a bit damp from the rain earlier, was still slippery enough to take me all the way down, which is a lot more than I can say for the Town Park's slides. I genuinely don't know what it is that makes some metal slides better than others, they all look like they're made of the same metal, don't they? Really confusing stuff. Anyway, it was a good slide, yeah. It wasn't particularly fast by any means, but I've definitely had worse.

Finally, the front of the ship has a below deck area too, with a bit more structure to it than the one at the back. I still think these are neat, and I especially like the one at the front. I'd probably have hung out here in the shade as a kid, if we're being honest.

That about covers it though, so what do I think in the end?

THE VERDICT: 7/10

>mfw I sit down to write this review

Ultimately, this place accomplishes what it sets out to do, but I don't think it's perfect, although it feels really pirate-y, and is a great example of a good themed playground. The problem keeping it from being a higher rating to me though, is something I didn't much touch on above. I feel like personally a lot of the obvious bright colored metal pre-fabricated parts like the ladders and so on kind of make me feel like they're half assing it a bit. They honestly could have spray painted that shit brown and it'd probably be a lot less obnoxious.

Ironically, despite being a much worse park overall, the Town Park did have one thing going for it, and that was fairly high commitment to the theme. On the whole, the Pirate Park IS great, but it could have been really great. This place did raise my hopes a little bit though, because I was starting to get worried that these would just be me ranting about a string of really shitty playgrounds.

But who am I kidding, that's probably going to end up the case anyway, isn't it?

This seems like a great playground. I know kid me fucking loved pirates and theming of playgrounds so I'd have enjoyed this place a lot. It has a lot of options for playing around on too, and as you said, that meme wheel actually fits and I'm sure that Kyle would love to make everyone really mad by spinning it. The below-deck area seems super cool for the atmosphere established by the theming.

I'm not particularly bothered by the bright colors as I feel it makes things stand out more for kid safety but I'm also looking at this through dark night picture lenses and it's probably fine in daytime anyways.