Heckscher Playground

One word: epic. This is easily one of the best playgrounds in NYC. It’s a real go-​out-​of-​your-​way type place to visit. You make a whole day out of it. Unlike most playgrounds, the natural stone used for the play facilities (not to mention the real bedrock it’s built next to) has that genuine outdoor adventure quality. The slides are super fast unlike some dinky ones other playgrounds have. It’s spacious, there’s good separation from the toddler and big kid areas. Heck, toddlers even get their own water sprinkler set apart from the big kid one. That’s unheard of right there. That helps with safety since big kids play rougher around water. Add the Central Park location and historical factor and, yeah, like I said. Epic.

Fabulous playground, especially for older kids (5ish and up) who love to climb. Our little mountain goat never wanted to leave!
Pretty clean bathroom (at least when we first arrived around 9).

We go here almost every weekend and some weekdays with my 2.5 year old active toddlers. They LOVE the park, and we live so close. It is a great place and we always run into someone or the other that we know lives in the area. The area is huge. It has two sections for swings, two big slides, a small climbing area leading to a sandbox, a bigger climbing area with running water and slides, and lots of small and big sprinklers. My kids like climbing and running around and most weekends we do playdates here before lunch at home. It tires the kids out. There is NO shade, so it does get very sunny. It gets very crowded on weekend evenings, some crazy people and their kids bring water guns and don’t care who gets wet in the process, very annoying. We go mornings and evenings sometimes, morning sun is hot, evening feels better and it is more crowded in evenings. If you have more than one toddler, best to keep an eye out for both because there are blind spots and you don’t want to lose your child! I wouldn’t say this is the best playground, sometimes my kids prefer smaller play areas like Madison Square park or Union Square park. I like those parks better because they are smaller and more enclosed and we don’t have to watch and follow our kids everywhere. Union Square park also has a tunnel slide that my kids LOVE. But this playground is huge and can’t be beat.

Lovely place for kids especially on a hot day, but why aren’t there any baby swings? The swings are made of plastic and as an adult, I almost slid off the seat!

Great playground for kids. This place has everything on a hot day — water, sand, jungle gym, slides, grass, you name it, Heckscher Playground has it. There are even rocks for the children to climb next to the playground. Overall a fun place to be a kid!

Beautiful day at Central Park. Can’t go wrong walking around here. All kinds of activity with wide walkways and special lanes for bikes and for running in addition to the walker’s paths throughout the park. We saw a great puppeteer with many kids enjoying his show. He really interacted well with them. You will be surprised at every turn as you make your way around Central Park and this playground is a good example.

Almost everything is made of concrete, stainless steel and whinestone. Even sandbox.
Will last forever but you are going to need protective clothing for the little ones.

No tips. Enjoy!

i’ve seen better looking parks…

I came here a day before Hurricane Sandy hit. Growing up, I’ve heard so many bad things about Central Park. And since I’m not from NY, I wanted to see for myself if Central Park is as bad as I’ve heard. (That, and I’ve always wanted to see Central Park in real life – Home Alone (the movie) peaked my interest).
All I can say is WOW! This park is great for kids. A small grass area for a picnic near the playground. A gate surrounding the playground so your kids don’t go running wild in Central Park. And restrooms 15 feet from the playground (for when your kid says «DAD! I GOTTA PEEEEEE!!!»
All in all, it would’ve been great if I had my kids w/​me during this trip. But, luckily I didn’t look like a creep watching other kids play, since I was with my friends who had their own kids… phew.

My «other» playground growing up as it wasn’t the very closest but it definitely was bigger and lots more fun in the summer.
Located inside Central Park near the 7^th Avenue and Central Park South entrance this huge playground has it all … swings, slides, rocks to climb on and even, in the warmer months, spray fountains for kids of all ages to play in the water and cool off.
Newly renovated but with the same fun attractions mostly, with a little more safety mixed in, this is a must-​visit for all … either to let the kids run around or to see what you were missing out on with your own local playground and feel jealous.
Lots of benches for moms and dads to sit on while they watch their kids play … just try to keep one eye on the parents and not have both of them on your iPad, ok? :-p

This is a gorgeous, huge playground, near the Columbus Circle subway stop at the southwest corner of central park. My four year old spent most of his time on the water playground. Most of this playground only has water running through the tunnels, and some spray fountains, which he easily avoided, given my direction to «not get wet.» But he did have to take his shoes and socks off to get around (but on the way out of the park, we saw signs saying keep shoes on). Given the big spray jets they have, how is that possible? Just water shoes, I guess. There were a lot of kids in swimsuits, barefoot, and some older kids carrying super soaker water guns, those noodles that shoot water and some with just buckets and bottles to fill and throw water. Happily, they were pretty respectful of kids who didn’t really want to get wet (or so it seemed). We were there mid-​week before school let out so it was not very crowded at all. This water playground led to giant climbing rocks. From the top of the rock I could see him very clearly and he spent time running all over the play structure and back up the rock. This is a large playground and I can imagine it being very chaotic for a younger child. There are lots of swings and a sand playground as well. There are bathrooms (some for just people in the playground-​three stalls, relatively clean).

If I could pick up this park and plop it down in Boston Commons, I would. It’s simply perfect, both for kids and adults. Kids have some unique concrete climbing ‘hills’ with ladders going down into tunnels (which we pretended were sewers because THAT IS HOW WE ROLL), bridges to run across, and a great water component which is perfect for a hot day. There are typically so many kids there, a great cross section of diversity from the city.
Adults will have fun sitting out, people watching. The giant rocks that surround the playground are fun for relaxing on. My niece had as much fun scaling those as she did playing on the actual playground. There is also an area for smaller kids, so they don’t get trampled by the older ones.

Newly renovated park is the largest in central park and great fun for the kids. It has a stream that crosses over a number of «hills» with tunnels and ladders and terminates in a set of sprinklers. The park also has a sand area, two of the biggest slides in the city and numerous swings. There’s a lot of open space with soft surfaces for playing as well.
The playground is located at Seventh Avenue & Central Park South from 61^st to 63^rd Streets.