Huntington Beach’s Adventure Playground turns on the tap for first time in nearly 4 years

Huntington Beach’s Central Park was the place to go for a splashing good time Saturday, when city officials reopened the water-filled Adventure Playground after three years of pandemic- and drought-related closures.

More than 200 children and their adult chaperones flocked to the nearly 1-acre site which has encouraged generations of local kids to flex their imaginations and muscles as they climb forts, slide down a mud hill and navigate rafts through a watery lagoon.

“It was so nice to see life brought back into the playground,” Chris Cole, a facility and events manager for the city, said Tuesday after the grand reopening. “For the staff who’ve worked on it, it was super rewarding to see that happen.”

Kids traverse a lagoon via a rope bridge at Huntington Beach’s Adventure Playground in Central Park. Shuttered since 2019, the seasonal park reopened to much fanfare Saturday.

(James Carbone)

Despite its popularity among children and parents as an affordable alternative to costly water parks ($4 per child, free for adults), Adventure Playground was shuttered at the close of the 2019 season and remained closed for the next two years under pandemic restrictions.

Staff members and community volunteers used that downtime to make some needed improvements and upgrades to the play area, including new rafts and forts, a rebuilt changing area and new mudslide staircase, ahead of a June 2022 reopening.

However, the month before the playground was to welcome its first visitors back to the site city officials, citing new water restrictions coming down from the state, announced Adventure Playground would remain closed for one more year to save water.

State officials had just declared a Level 2 water shortage, prohibiting the refilling of ornamental lakes and ponds beyond levels necessary for sustaining aquatic life. And because Adventure Playground uses non-recirculated potable water from Central Park’s irrigation system, closure seemed like the only option.

Minjun Chang, 7, of South Pasadena, splashes into muddy water on the “mud slide” at Huntington Beach’s Adventure Playground. The water feature, which uses potable water from the park’s irrigation system, stayed closed last year due to statewide drought conditions.

(James Carbone)

“That was kind of at the peak of concern over the drought,” Cole recalled of the move. “We figured we’d be better stewards of water conservation and decided to postpone the opening.”

However, after an unseasonably wet winter led to an easing of statewide drought restrictions, park officials decided on a Saturday reopening and invited members of the Kiwanis Club of Huntington Beach to serve freshly grilled hot dogs and snacks to first-day visitors.

John Etheridge came to the playground shortly after 8 a.m. to set up his grill and noticed a long line of people already stationed outside the entrance of the park.

“The excitement level was really, really high — it was exciting, even for me,” the Huntington Beach resident said Tuesday.

Etheridge, 56, remembers playing at Adventure Playground when he was young, being out in nature, building tree houses with nails and pieces of plywood and just being a kid.

Kids slide down the “mud slide” on opening day of Adventure Playground in Huntington Beach Saturday. Since 1975, the site has encouraged generations of kids to build, play and imagine.

(James Carbone)

“It was a place you could get dirty, you could get muddy, where you got [an occasional] nail through the foot, which I did,” he fondly recalled. “Today, the bottom of the area is concrete, so it’s a lot safer and there’s no more nails lying around. [But] the spirit is the same.”

Huntington Beach’s Adventure Playground is located at Central Park, 7111 Talbert Ave. The area is open Monday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., through Aug. 18 but will be closed on July 4. For more information, or to check availability, visit huntingtonbeachca.gov and search for “Adventure Playground” or call (714) 842-7442.