Haha yep all the old playground equipment was made out of like solar heated steel. I remember vividly my brother pushing me while i was on one pf those spinning death wheels and he spun it so fast I couldn’t get off and I was holding on for dear life, but getting scorched by the steel that had been sitting in the 90 degree sun all day. Man its crazy that they allowed those things.
We had an old decommissioned steam train engine, a helicopter, a rope bridge to try and shake people off of, and the slide of death - where if you went too fast, you would land on the peak of the next bump and bang your head on the steel covered cement. Dennis The Menace park, in the 1970’s and early 80’s. It was an awesome park, and I survived with a couple of bumps and bruises - that taught me to be a little more careful next time I did something stupid. I was pretty good at doing stupid things when i was a child…
"Dennis The Menace park..."
Sounds like Action Park lol! If you don't know the backstory it's worth finding a podcast.
I grew up with a small playground right behind my parent's house. It had the normal stuff along with a giant slide with the bump. Hot metal in summer yes, but worse in winter since I live in a cold weather climate. I lost count the amount of kids who stuck their tongues onto the slide poles as a dare.
Also, we had a giant turtle that was hollow underneath so kids could go in there and pee!
Last year I read a great book written by the son of the founder of Action Park. Amazing story. It’s available on Amazon as a paperback so not too spendy. I read it on Kindle.
I know I shouldn't laugh. The podcast I heard listed how rides were set up and the daily expectation of people getting hurt at the park. Became kind of an in-joke to people who lived near there.
I guess it was the beginning of the end when someone was electrocuted in the white water ride. Also there were some drownings in the wave pool. Interesting story.
Traction Park!
Class Action Park!
Dennis the Menace park is still awesome (but not as dangerous as it used to be!)
I think I played on this ONCE. Somewhere. I can’t remember where.
And coming down that slide that was easily 350 degrees
Yea Blackheath Memorial Park in the Blue Mountains. When i was a little kid we got dared by the big kids to climb to the top level. Scary as fuck. There was also a vintage car, aeroplane, the Old Lady in the Shoe and a Pirate ship. Ahhhhh the 70’s. 👌
Duarte park across from the library, So. Cal.
we were always tryin to climb up the outside of it haha
Todd Grove Park in Ukiah, CA. Still there I think.
Covina, ca. Had one
Yes. Air Power Park in Hampton, VA.
Don’t know if name changed but we used to call it Rocket Park. First thought when I saw this post. I LOVED that park
Yep. Anaheim ca.
Yes! I remember those and getting burned sliding down in Texas heat 😆
Yes - Richardson, Texas, and I believe this photo is the one from Richardson. Here is the rest of the story: The rocketship slide at Heights Park in Richardson, Texas. One of the few remaining all-metal rocketship slides in the world. Later in 2006, the rocket slide was repainted with bright red and blue colors. The 40 year old rocketship was taken down carefully by the City of Richardson on July 14, 2008. Many of the playground features of Heights Park were cited for removal due to safety concerns and non-compliance with the ADA. The structure was placed in storage. City officials hope to incorporate the structure into a public artwork project in the future.
There was also one at Chisholm Park in Hurst. I think it was there until the early 00s.
DYLAN!
My mind went right here too!
Randolph Park in Tucson. Way hotter and less fun than it looked.
We did, right here in the suburbs of DC! It was at Van Dyke Park!!
I remember climbing to top on outside of it, sometimes I wonder how I survived my childhood 🙃
🥳
that must have been back in the days when kids were allowed to fall down!
My town still has one! It gets a fresh coat of paint every couple years and looks brand new again
Yupp. Livermore, CA
The in Boulder at Scott carpenter park is still there
Mar Vista Park, West Los Angeles
Dwight IL does
Yes!! There was a big one at a local park and a slightly smaller one at an elementary school. As a kid I was soooo jealous of the kids who went to that school.
Yes, and I loved it.
Ha. Still does. Miami, Oklahoma.
Still does!!!
Yep. The city took the slide off for safety.
I remember sitting on the top floor of this slide in the 80s. It felt like I could see for miles. I saw a car crash while I was up there and it was the best day of my life.
That looks like Kittridge Park in the Valley.
Mine sure did.
The park was about 200 meters down the road from my house. Me and all of the other neighborhood kids spent countless hours chasing each other up and down it. The slide pretty much burnt your arse off in summer.
Sadly, the slide has since been removed and access to the inside has been welded shut.
It's a... it's a.... IT'S A ROCKET SHIP!
Hell yeah
The King of the playground
That thing was pants only, shorts will get ya burnt. Climbing onto the thing sometimes hurt your hands but you gotta man up on the sunny days. :D
Better. My town had rockets.
Don't tell me...your town had one, too
Ours was torn down in the 90's. It had come to be associated as a place small-time drug dealers would hang out. It was much loved and missed, even to today. I've seen these being restored on television shows, and still retain a high value.
The irony is that an early nickname for part of our town was Rocket Town, due to the number of homes built from wood from rocket crates. It also was nicknamed Miracle City because in the early days of American rocketry, our sleepy desert town was home to a military base that performed much of the basic science used. Studying Cosmic Radiation and it's effects on living animals and people, developing rocket fuels, launch pads, recovery vehicles, parachutes, and much more. Even the various rovers were tested here due to the alien-like landscape of the surrounding desert. There are still areas named after various planets and moon features. We still test rocket engines, and our restricted airspace is used for the current commercial developments.
Sure until too many idiot kids started sticking their heads through the bars. Enough city lawsuits and off to the scrap yard.
My town still has a rocket slide, and an old tank.
Still does. My kid just got a bit too old to want to play on it. They tore it down a few months ago then put it back all shiny.
No….but there’s an amusement park near me that still has one of those rockets that is about 40 foot tall and has a spiral slide that goes around the outside of it. They give you a burlap mat to help you from getting third degree burns from the sun beating down on it.
The entrance, NSW, Australia
19700s. Avenue P & East 5th St., Brooklyn, NY: Rapidly the third and fourth levels had to be sealed off with metal plating and welding due to miscreants.
Yeah and it was only the second most dangerous piece of playground equipment that also smelled like urine constantly at the park. The best is when all the boys would go to the very top and then entice the girls to follow and then shake the ever living daylights out of the thing when they made it to the third floor.
Hell ya!
Wantagh State Park had one and sadly sold it to a private Nursery School a mile away.
We still have one
Carl Schurz park 86th street & East End Ave Manhattan . Same park that has Gracie Mansion , the NYC Mayor residence bordering the East River . They had a giant submarine also
Yup and they always smelled like piss
Rocket ship park ! That wasn't the name of the park, it was named in honor of someone that I can't recall.
We always called it rocket ship park
Ours was at the drive in movie theater. It is now a decoration at a fireworks place.
Omg I loved the rocket slide. There was on along the Great Ocean Road and mum and dad would stop there at times.
Did?... still does! https://youtu.be/e-l89wqaFXE?si=5hQ13i2q7pb8PIkd
news report has a little history too!
Not my town I grew up in, but my grandmother lived across the street from a park that had one. Summer days when we visited, us kids would go to the park and play on the rocket ship.
Ohhh, I loved the ticket slide!!
*rocket
There’s still one at the county fairgrounds
no, but we had the hamburger jail tower
No but I would have loved that as a kid!
Wow...childhood memory tucked in the recesses of my brain unlocked
Yes until the stoners burned it down trying to launch it.
Salisbury, South Australia.
Yep solid enclosed tube with spiral slide, stairs up the middle, and viewing platform at the top. Talk about a death trap but damn did we love that thing!
My hometown has an ENORMOUS new 3-story one, with multiple slides and climbing surfaces inside and out!
No but we had a witches hat!
Scared the shit out of me because I hate heights but damn I loved those.
We had one of those, and an old fighter jet, that we would climb threw the exhaust area. I remember many kids falling off and getting stitches. Here is a link of a picture of it Richmond va.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/679/32619043504_a561f32663_b.jpg
No fence back then, we would just climb and play on it.
Yes it was two stories tall! The slide went from the very top! Last time I rode it as a 5 year old it collapsed a week later on a kid. Hope he was ok.
Metro park in Harrison Twp, MI!
Ah, yes! The galvanized steel rocket ship. It definitely handed out its fair share of injuries. Pales next to the merry-go-round for nurse’s office visits. We had soft concrete and compacted dirt to break our falls. Finally after enough kids got hurt they covered it with shredded car tires, that eventually settled, to expose… soft concrete and compacted dirt. Oh the 80s!
I would still climb that today!
I remember the one at the park on Lincoln st. in North Park San Diego, seemed huge, I'm sure other parks in San Diego had then too, but that one I distinctly remember playing on.
The Park is still there but the rocket must be long gone.
We sure did have a rocket slide. Wasn’t that popular…never really took off.
Ernie Howlett Park in Rolling Hills Estates, CA. I just looked at their website, looks like the rocket slide is gone.
Huron SD had/has the best one
Lived in Chatsworth, CA, and there was one in the park next to the Baskin-Robbin’s that we would climb up on to eat our ice cream in it. Some of my fondest and earliest memories.
Norman, Ok Reeves Park
First place I smoked weed as a kid. Blast off!
Yes! We still do.
No, we didn't have a slide at all. We do now.
My town didn’t, but one near my grandparents did, and it was like a special treat to get to go to the “rocket playground”.
Ft. Bragg in NC had a big park that had a bunch of these all connected together with bridges. We always called it Rocket Park growing up and I had some of my happiest memories there. This was in the early 80’s.
No. We had THREE! And they were joined by walkways. You poor schlubs who only had one… Middle class must have been so hard.
Roxbury Park, Beverly Hills, CA.
I’m so old, my kids played on one of these.
Once, when my youngest was maybe 3 years old, he climbed up to the top chamber, only to realize that he didn’t know how to climb down ladders, yet. A girl from our neighborhood who was usually mean to younger kids carried him down to the chamber with the slide so he could get out. She was only 6 or 7 but managed to climb down with one hand while carrying him. If you’re reading this, thanks Jenny!
This reminds me of vacationing in Florida.
No, but the neighboring "big city" did. We'd take family picnics in the park and play on that slide all afternoon. Later, in my teens and 20's, my friends and I would climb to the top at night and get stoned. Then it became a safety hazard in during the "Pussification Of America Movement" in the late 90's, so they closed down the top two levels.
That's what we called it.........the Rocket Slide Park. That way everyone knew which one we meant.
There was one at a park near my grandparents house. Scottsdale, AZ
Dude in 29 Palms has one in his back yard, been there for as long as I remember.
Valley of the Moon Park in Anchorage AK!!!
If you were brave enough to go to the top that thing swayed like CRAZY.
I think there is still a rocket there but the old rickety one from the 70s was replaced.
“Valley of the Moon” park in Anchorage, Alaska had one!
That exact one!
Behind the Dairy Queen. Lots of memories of that rocket and ice cream. It seemed so massive when I was a kid. I went back to that park as an adult and it was much smaller than I remembered.
Prospect Park in Huron, SD.
No, but we summered in Los Alamos*, which had a number of cool playscapes.
* Dad worked at the Lab
I'm am in small town Texas, we still have one lol
Yes! 😁
Horner Park in Chicago
They were everywhere in Australia in the 80s
My legs got burnt (both friction and just the hot metal) just looking at this thing! So many fond memories though.
Hell yes it did n sis n I loooooved it! It was at Victor Park.
Yes it was great in the spring and late fall but that damn thing would give you third degree burns during the summer
Moorehead Park in Ida Grove Iowa still has one.
This looks like something from the Fallout video game. I don't remember having on of these, but we did have a huge 3-story giant metal slide with multiple lanes where you used the burlap sacks to slide down. Fun times!
That slide was as hot as the rocket exhaust
Boulder still has one of these. At Scott Carpenter Park
We had a flying saucer. Tons of fun. There was a ladder.
This same design is still standing at a park in Laguna Beach Ca. Took my son there a few years back.
Yup... and we would climb outside of it. It was glorious. :)
Did you have the four legged spider?
Yes! Atlantis Park
It's funny how some of us have gone soft and now look at things like this in horror.
Loved that as a child - we would hang out in the top section .
Yes! Climbed in one as an adult with my kids freaked me out from the heat and claustrophobia
Sure did! 🤣🤣🤣
Yes In South Philly 2nd & Jackson burke playgound
Long Jetty NSW :D
Yes and then someone hung themselves from it so we no longer have a rocket slide available
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Oh my god yes. And that shit was hot as hell just trying to get to the top. Not to mention the actual slide was like scorching fire to go down. It’s crazy we had stuff like this lol