I may have already ranted about how bad that new playground is, but I just took my sister there today, and I must comment on it, it absolutely stinks. It's not just poorly designed. If you ask me, it's unSAFE. Heck, I'm ready to write in to complain.

See, it's NEW, a lot newer and fancier, but it's like they tried to make it look pretty and shiny before making it work well for children.

No part of a playground equipment should be open that is above four feet. By open I mean like, a ladder, you know? Big gaping hole in the railing. A kid could fall through there. Now a spiral slide, okay. It could go up to about ten feet but there's going to be thick railing on either side and on the sides of the slide too, and the staircase extends up to there only for the slide, nothing else comes down from it. And if it's a straight slide or a net or something, great. If a kid falls, it's on a gentle angle. But a rock wall that's six feet tall? Geez! The normal height of a kid who's going to be on there is THREE FEET. That's double their height!

And the rock wall! We went to this playground in this nice park somewhere else, it's not far but we had to drive there. Not a place we could walk to regularly, at least. It had a very good rock wall on the playground. It was elevated at about 50, 60 degrees, nice wide foot and handholds, about six inches wide each, you didn't even half to climb it, you could step up it. And overall it was about three feet tall. There was a very nice thing on the back of it, too. If you went behind the rock wall there'd be an embossed T-Rex fossil, which is very cool. Very gentle, yet challenging for the little guys, and safe.

The rock wall here is SHEER. It's six feet tall and ONE FOOT WIDE. That's, what, eighty degrees? And the foot and handholds are about an inch each! My sister didn't even bother to attempt that. If someone falls off of that, which is very likely... I mean, I had trouble getting up, and I'm nearly four times her age.

And the SLIDE. No children's slide should be more than 30 degrees. What kid would want to slide down something that's as long as it is tall? That's SCARY. And I think I mentioned, the first time she tried the slide my sister SLID OFF THE END OF IT AND ONTO THE WOODCHIPS. She started crying.

And the curve! The slide makes a sharp right turn, then a sharp left turn, in the hopes of being more fun. Well it doesn't work when you do the zigzag within FOUR FEET. The kid sliding just gets knocked around!

Please, these playground companies should stop trying to be all new and fancy. THERE'S A REASON THE OLD EQUIPMENT WORKED.

*sigh*...