Decided to visit the Universal area (playground for all ages and abilities, seasonal spray park, seasonal mini golf and sledding hill)! We were on late afternoon weekday so not as busy or crowded as it would be on the weekend. The spray park has not opened yet (looks like will plan to open June 30).
The good: I love the variety and amount of climbing structures and things to do in this playground. I love that this is universal (The Bay Area has a bunch of them and it's called Magical Playground- with plans to build them in each town).
There is a free reservation system online for parking (max 2 hours) for weekends and holidays only. No Street or Neighborhood Parking is allowed.
The bad:
Because Mass is slow to add cool new universal parks, this one was hugely popular with the community that neighbors were complaining because there was not enough parking and people were overloading to resident parking. So hopefully there will be plans to add more parking.
They have those built in shades but it is essentially useless because it doesn't cover everything. I wish there were more trees for natural shade. Because it was unbearable in the hot sun. We were sweating after 5 minutes.
I can see it being very nice in the fall with cooler weather. 4 stars because this is an amazing playground but in the grueling summer heat, you could get a heat stroke so stay hydrated! read more