Review: Extreme Air Park.

Sorry the photos suck today. I wasn't thinking blog post when we headed out
 and it wasn't until we got there that I realized I should've brought my camera. 

Today Rachael and I decided to take Babe to the Extreme Air Park in Richmond. I only just heard about it a couple weeks ago. I did add it in as an update to my Lesser-Known Rainy Day Vancouver Activities post, but most of you wouldn't have noticed it tacked on there. So here is a quick review of the place.

It's pretty awesome although be prepared; it's expensive for a kids activity. It's $14.00 per hour of jumping, $19.00 per hour and a half or $21.00 for two hours. But on weekdays from 10am to 3pm it's $12.00 for an hour and a half, which makes it a little more reasonable. And trust me, if you're planning on bouncing too an hour and a half is plenty. I almost had a heart attack.

Also on the first trip you have to buy special socks to wear inside at $3.00 a pair. After that if you remember to bring them back then you don't have to buy more. I was a little annoyed that not only are toddlers the same price as adults you also have to pay for a pair of adult sized socks for them despite the fact that they would NEVER fit a toddler and baby/toddler socks usually have their own grips on the soles. So I had to pay for an extra pair of socks that Babe of course couldn't wear, which was ridiculous. Luckily Rachael had the sense to trade the extra pair of socks for a locker rental for us so it worked out. I don't know if the having to buy big socks for tiny tots is an actual policy or if the useless kid behind the counter just didn't want to bother with a three dollar refund. If I had judged the place just based on the front counter experience I would have left. But the place is pretty new so maybe they are still working out the kinks.

Once you're inside, Extreme Air Park is pretty sweet and it was worth the money. It's basically wall to wall trampolines. Actually, the walls are lined with trampolines too!  And the only area that you can fall off the trampoline is into an enormous foam pit.

Babe loved running on the trampoline half pipe.
Didn't like waiting her turn very much though.

It's got trampolines of all different sizes, trampoline dodgeball courts and trampoline basketball stations. They offer aerobics classes, special group rates and birthday parties. The website says that they will soon offer parent and child jump sessions so maybe that would be a more affordable time to take a little jumper.

I was mildly concerned that Babe, who is not 18 months old yet would get clobbered by bigger kids who are literally bouncing off the walls in there. So we went at a time when we thought it wouldn't be busy. It was still busy. Don't kids go to school anymore? Maybe it was let-your-home-schooled-kids-bounce day.

However most of the tramps are all sectioned off into personal sizes and even with the large ones, you can only have one jumper per tramp at a time. So unless kids get too rowdy and forget the rules there seemed to be little risk to the tiny jumpers. If it was a very busy day I could see it getting out of hand a little so that's another reason to keep an eye out for the promised parent and child times. But I saw lots of parents with a tiny kid happily bouncing and an older kid careening through the warehouse-sized facility like the Tasmanian Devil.

If you are a very nervous mommy you might have an anxiety attack with all the big kids flying around, but I personally felt that Babe was pretty safe. No one ever crashed into her -- unlike a bouncy castle which is essentially like throwing ten kids into a giant dryer and letting them tumble on air dry for an hour.

Rachael and Babe.

Babe was perfectly safe and she had a BLAST! So did Rachael and I, and bonus; it was an amazing workout! It was so much fun and such great exercise that I'm really tempted to try their Aerobics (AIRobics) class and I'd love to get a team together to go and play trampoline dodgeball.


My recommendation:

If you are looking for an activity that your older kids and younger ones can both enjoy doing this place is a definite win. If you only have a toddler maybe wait to see what their parent and child deal is. Or try it out on a weekday morning when it's cheapest and likely the least busy (although don't expect a ghost town). I'll for sure take Babe back because it was fun for both of us and I didn't have to worry about her falling which was more relaxing for me than taking her to the playground where she is now climbing all over the big-kid equipment.


Bonus: If you don't want to bounce (WTF?) there is an adult-only lounge with Wi-Fi.
Downer: No baby change table, I had to take Babe outside and change her on the endgate of the truck. But that's not a first.