These guys. “Whirls”. Kids Merry-Go-Rounds. They seemed to have disappeared from the playground landscape. Why?
I can’t recall the last time I actually saw one, and I have taken my kids to many different playgrounds over the last 5 years. When I was a kid they were everywhere.
I’m guessing it probably has something to do with injuries and/or lawsuits, but I need some help here.
Thanks
Your guess is right. Many traditional pieces of playground equipment have been banned, including merry-go-rounds, teeter-totters and swing sets:
It’s no wonder all kids do is watch TV and play video games. Everything else is “too dangerous”!
Hey thanks Fear Itself.
But you know, I still see Teeter-Totters and Swing Sets all over the place. Merry-Go-Rounds, on the other hand, are simply nowhere to be found!
There was a huge park near where I used to live with a giant climbing frame (on concrete) . I went back a few years ago ago and there’s pretty much nothing left there now.
or one ago even :smack:
My mums a teacher, apparently the pencil pushers would pretty much prefer that break didn’t occur at all, children playing is just a litigation nightmare.
There’s a fantastic playground near here called Indian Boundary (Thank to third grader Jack K for taking a picture of it, none of the other websites have anything!). Legend has it that it was designed by a kid, as part of a contest, and then tweaked by safety experts and other boring grownups. It’s very safe, and yet very fun. That one picture is only about a quarter of it and really doesn’t do it justice. There’s half a dozen or more loose bridges that wobble scarily as you cross, many levels and nooks and cranies for hide and seek, Towers for lording it over your friends, and a fixed tire wobbly not-a-swing thing (The tire’s suspended by heavy springs) that’s a hoot. The “dangerous” swings are set well away from the running and climbing area. There’s a deep layer of soft mulch underneath everything.
So it’s possible to build a park that’s fun and safe. But I don’t think it’s particularly cheap. That mulch needs to get replaced, or at least filled in, once or twice a year. Everything at Indian Boundary is made of wood, which will need replacing sooner or later. I’m sure when it rots away, they’ll replace it with boring but safe stuff with that bouncy surface underfoot, like every other park around.
I would imagine that many have disappeared because teenagers like to wrap a piece of rope to the main axle, tie the other end to a truck, and sit on the merry-go-round while the truck takes off. News reports about this show up every few months.
There was a merry-go-round at my elementary school. From the looks of it, it was made from scraps; the frame was old metal pipe, and the seats were old planks. The seats were high up off the ground; you sat facing the center, with your legs dangling down. It was great – at full capacity, the thing could hold around 18 kids, and could easily be pushed by two. You could also power it by sitting sideways on one of the seats and pushing with one leg.
Within a 5-mile radius of my house in Los Angeles there are two of these merry-go-rounds, 1 at a public park and 1 at my child’s preschool. I have often wondered why they haven’t been removed, since I am always sure, watching children play on them, that a severe injury is imminent. Thus far, apparently, no major injuries have occurred.
Perhaps more so than most other pieces of play equipment, merry-go-rounds store up quite a bit of energy; when an incident occurs on a climbing frame, or the slide, even the swings, the kid falls off and everything stops (pretty much) - the amount of energy absorbed by the child’s body is fairly limited. On a merry-go-round, there’s an accident and there is still this enormous iron flywheel whirling around to cause further injury and to impart all its energy on the victim.
Surely part of the fun in these playgrounds is the danger? It was for me when I was small. I was devastated when our local park was destroyed to put in its place a crap “safe” alternative.
Well I found some interesting stats regarding our disappearing playground equipment.
Seesaws are found on 13% of all playgrounds (Schools, Child Care, & Parks combined). Merry-Go-Rounds = 7%. Geodesic Domes = 10%.
Yep, say goodbye to the Seesaw, Merry-Go-Round, and Geo Dome! It’s a shame, because these are such fun pieces of equipment. The Merry-Go-Round in particular was super fun to play on!
Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find any stats regarding injuries and Merry-Go-Rounds. Reasons for their endangerment are also hard to find. Threat of injury, I guess, is a given. Threat of litigation. Moving parts and maintenance costs seem to play a part.
I also can’t seem to find many articles lamenting their demise, which surprises me.
So I guess whole generations of kids will never know the fun of playing on Merry-Go-Rounds and Seesaws!? That sucks! 
I saw a slide in a public park, and it was built on a conical mound of dirt. There were stairs up one side, and the slide went down the other. Any kid falling off any part of it would go down a couple inches.
When I was a kid, I fell off a slide. I was at the top, and for some reason, I tried to turn around. The next thing I knew, I had fallen to the ground, flat on my back. It knocked the wind out of me, but I was up and running in a minute. Lawsuit? Nah. I never told my parents.
That looks and sounds exactly like a larger version of the Creative Playground, the structure (built by VoTec students) that used to stand behind my primary school. They took it out a few years ago, and I don’t know why. Probably had to do with a combination of fear (there were parts in the “tower” and “castle” sections in which children could not be seen by adults while they were playing) and the wood getting old.
GOOD RIDDANCE to the stupid merry-go-rounds. There’s one at the park a mile from my home; I used to walk down there and play when I was little. A kid from the other side of the neighborhood had a grudge against me (I still don’t know why) and when I was running on the inside of the merry-go-round as a pusher, she knocked me down and wouldn’t let the other kids stop the ride, so I was trapped under it getting stepped on and kicked and having the rungs on the bottom smack into my head for what felt like ages, until a fireman who happened to be washing his truck across the street noticed what was going on and made them stop and let me up.
Indian Boundry used to be just wonderful. Do they still have the mini zoo? And the huge fountain you could play in? I grew up near Clark and Ridge and on super-hot days my mom would take us to Indian Boundry for a special treat. I think we’d go there sometimes during playcamp too.
I went there not too long ago and saw the absolutly beautiful wooden structure they have built since I was a kid. The photos in the Wilmette link really don’t do it justice at all.
There’s a housing development near my house, one of the new developments where they put the houses so close together that they really don’t have yards, and they have a play ground of sorts. It consists of one small wooden structure about a foot off the ground, with a roof and a very short slide. That’s it. I have never seen any child play on it, and my own children would find it interesting for 3 minutes - if that - if I bothered to take them there, which I wouldn’t. The housing development might better have saved their money than spend it on that waste of space and good intentions.
Pulleys are disappearing, too, now. They used to be the best bit of any park.
Yep, it’s all still there. Trucculent Goat on his barrel and all. He’ll often give us a good show and clack horns with the other goat. They play king of the mountain for the barrel, and we make a good audience. (I swear, he winked at me last time I was there with the littles, right before giving a spectacular crash of the horns!)
They also have a really great park district building there where they do arts (visual and perfoming) classes. There’s also a relatively new restored wetlands around the old pond you may not have seen. I do herb walks there.
And yeah, I’m bummed I can’t find any good pics of the place. I’ll have to take some myself this spring. 
The folks we bought our house from had one installed in the back yard. It runs about forty feet from the swing and slide to a tree across the yard.
The twins love the swing set, and I’m sure they’ll love the high rope swing and the pulley when they get a little older. They just turned two.
They both love to climb and run around, and they’re very healthy and athletic kids so far.