Equipment by Gametime.
Surface: wood chips.
Updated July 2023. Original review here.
We returned to Ellesmere Park recently to revisit one of our favourite Toronto skateparks, and were pleasantly surprised to see that the playground had been upgraded.
The rejuvenation hasn't added any new elements (still no water play or sandbox) but the playground is fun and colourful. It had been a while since we’d seen any new GameTime equipment too; most Scarborough playgrounds seem to all be getting rejuvenated with Miracle equipment…although I fully recognize that only extreme playground nerds will care about that.
Two climbers, one for each age group, sit on either side of a neat little structure called a Sensory Dome, which I think I’ve only ever seen once before, although I can’t remember. GameTime’s website claims that the openings on the dome "can be fitted with one of our GT Sensors to provide auditory, visual or tactile experiences.” This one doesn’t have that feature, which is fine because as far as I can remember the sensors on the one we saw were working poorly or not at all.
There’s also a fun swing that was big enough to hold five kids from the daycare who were there during our visit. They asked me if I wanted to join them, and I politely declined for fear that I might break it, or at the very least make the daycare supervisors nervous.
Speaking of swings, a sad change: there was a row of swings here that previously were so close to the trees that with enough momentum kids’ feet could touch the branches. Those swings are still there, but have sadly been moved so that they are perpendicular to the aforementioned trees. Oh well.
So the skatepark is still the main attraction here (with a cool new temple providing a majestic backdrop) but the re-done playground does make Ellesmere Park a slightly better place to visit.