Powell Barnett Park/Playground

Stopped by to let my 4 year old play on Sat. What a great park. Easy to park right next to the playground. Nice new equipment that is great for older and little ones a bathroom and nice people. We will be back to run and climb here soon.

I love this park. Some of the toys seem a little dangerous but all playgrounds are. My son busted his eyebrow on the bouncy teeter totter thing and we had to make a trip to the ER for stitches, but he is pretty accident prone. Just have to keep an eye on the kids because of the precarious toys. Which by the way, the kids love! I’ve also had birthday parties and barbecues here; aaaand it’s awesome for sledding when it snows!

We came hereby accident, just looked for the closest park to where we were coming from and our GPS took us here. I had no issues and my kids LOVED it. The neighborhood isn’t prestigue but had not worries either. We were there in the middle of the afternoon and there was very nice people with families there. The park has great basketball courts and even a lowered one for the younger kids, great playground equpiment, I LOVE that their bathroom is in the middle of the playground and we don’t have to travel too far. They have plenty of grassy area for frisbees and bbq grills for the summer. Pretty clean and no big issues with homeless. Overall enjoyed it.

So this park comes with a caveat.
A neighborhood caveat.
Here you have one those «ultimate» parks (thanks to the Starbucks Ultimate Park Makeover) complete with a younger and older jungle gym with complex play areas, basketball courts, wading pool, pathways for walking, and plenty of open space for picnics, bbqs, Ultimate Frisbee, Football, Soccer, Tag, Shadow Tag, Freeze Tag, TV Tag, Marco Polo, Blind Man’s Bluff, Duck Duck Goose, Red Rover, Red Light Green Light, Simon Says, Kick The Can, Parachute, Mother May I, Telephone, and much… much more.
The thing about this park that opens up at 4am is the fact that a nice park doesn’t always change anything about the face of the community. It’s a great park in a neighborhood that doesn’t completely appreciate it the way it should be. However, don’t let that take away from the fact that its the same community that fought to keep the park as modern as it is and the wading pool open. This led to Disney Family naming Powell Barnett Park one of the best parks in the country. It really is an excellent park. Had me wanting to let the kid inside out for a little playground aerobics.
In the event you need to use the facilities, no need to head home, just find the ADA-​accessible bathroom shaped like a castle; located in the middle of the play area.
This park slash playground is a truly awesome experience for the little parkour ninja in your kid and parents who enjoy watching their child do something other than pressing R2 to call an air strike on an opponent. Just be aware that you may and can come across parents and/​or kids who really don’t care about yours.
–Go to this park if you enjoy awesome, the outside, monkey bar madness, and are the product of countless hours gaming in your moms basement. You need this.
–Don’t go to this park if you can’t act as a sometimes part-​time bouncer security complete package for you kid (s).

The equipment at this park is pretty nice and the park is quite large. You’ve got climbing things, spinning things, sliding things and a nice set of basketball courts, including a lowered basket for kids. My 5 year old loves that one in particular. But we’ve been coming here off and on since he was 2, so it’s not just for older kids.
It’s also easy to find parking right along the street outside the park, which is nice. And if you’re just in the mood to fly a kite or kick a soccer ball around there’s a big grassy area too.
I’m gonna deduct a star only because the bathrooms are often closed (although to be fair that’s a combination of vandalism and budget cuts) and some of the items are starting to show their wear. And again, budget cuts have meant that the wading pool is now just a concrete bowl for riding your bike around in.

Great park, totally outfitted with cool climbing areas, hooping courts, wading pool and great paved areas to ride your bike.
It’s our go-​to park for my little one most of the time.
Why three stars, Clover? It sounds so cool, what gives?
The bathrooms get closed more than they’re open, which makes no sense to me. While we (and many others) call it ‘Starbucks Park’ because of the awesome community investment Starbucks and their employees made to get this to be a very nice park, the city doesn’t do bupkis to keep it nice I feel.
The wading pool wasn’t open one year we tried because it needed repairs. Really? I can’t belive that you couldn’t find the budget to repair it in the off season. I also find it hard to believe that you can’t afford to make sure that amazing investment from Starbucks really benefits the community by making sure it’s always safe.
Added points for the crosswalk enhancement of the flags on either side, but something tells me that wasn’t the city.
I also sadly find there to be creepers here occasionally, moreso than other parks, last time we had ‘way too high powered camera’ guy and ‘metal detector guy’ during the same 1 ½ hour visit. That’s too many creepers per hour for me.

I would give it more stars for the awesome playground & low basketball hoops for the kiddos — but with a recent report of bullets flying during a rally at the park, I’m a little more cautious.
We do still go quite often during the summer & will likely continue to do so, it’s probably just not as high on the list as it used to be.

We live so close, but don’t frequent this park quite as often. While the play structures are incredible, with some awesome climbing pieces for older kids towards the north side of the park, and a fun area for those 2 – 5 years old, the surroundings are a bit sketchy.
I took my 2 and 4 year old kids to the wading pool today, and it wasn’t that busy despite the great weather. It was staffed by someone who was there to check the chlorine and chemical levels, not so much to referee the kids. My youngest was pushed from behind not 10 minutes after we arrived, ended up with a skinned and bloodied knee so we had to leave.
I’d recommend parking on the side street to the south and taking the stairs right down if you don’t have a stroller, but there was a group of older adults drinking 20-​ozs from brown paper bags and openly smoking MJ. Even the whiff of this stuff was blowing over to the playground and giving me a headache. Add the loud bass pumping cars hanging out to the side, and I think I’d just rather not expose my kids to this stuff.

Say whatcha like, this park is never dull. Sporting a towering spider web-​like climbing structure that seems especially impressive-​even incredulous!- in our current era of parental über-​paranoia, where slides seem to be treated with sandpaper so as to prevent sliding, and swings seem to be weighted down with horseshoes and recycled Harley boots lest they take flight into a joy-​producing arc.
Not this beast, it’s high and mighty and the kids sense the delirious danger which is antiseptically squeegeed off their other play areas, and there’s a little tremor in the air as they climb precariously up.
This park has incredibly cool play structures; spinning pole thingamajigs that rival carnival rides, and if you cling hard and fast to them and tuck yourself into the centripedal epicenter, and you’re not, say, six, you may actually puke. At least a little.
The bathrooms look like an ocher castle, and there’s a steep hill edging the basketball courts for excellent log rolling opportunities. For the record, this can lead to bruising and whining… bring noise canceling headphones for the drive home.
Some days, as the reviewer below noted, there are a few cinematic gangbanger types, or pot smokers, or strange, inelegant blends of people… but other times there’s a real harmony at work and the park seems a glowing paean to citywide harmony and happiness.
My boys request it consistently. We’ll look for you on the spider web, cowboys.

Wow! This is an awesome park. It has everything a kid could want to swing, spin, climb, play and get silly on. The kids had a great time and this park is one of the best in Seattle.
Why would I rate this only a 4 when obviously it should be a 5, you ask? Because the people at the park were less than friendly. I was verbally abused by one woman who told me my niece wasn’t courteous to her son and that as her ‘mother’ (I didn’t correct her) I lacked common courteousy because of my ‘children’. After that she glared at me the entire time. Great… Then as we were leaving several people were smoking pot right out in the open. Even better to be around my 3 year old daughter and 4 year old niece. (who I admit, was a brat)
But, other than that the park is great and I will give it another shot because a great park like this shouldn’t be ruined by one bad experience.

I’ve been eying this park, erh playground (google calls it one thing, Seattle Parks calls it another) for about a year now. I had been here before a few years ago as they have a very cool rope climbing structure. But, now, as I drove past it I could see lots of colorful play equipment that looked really fun.
So, I’ve been figuring out a way to capture my niece and nephew and get them to the park so I would have an excuse to go! And yesterday, my planning and plotting came to fruition!
It is a really cool park. They have all sorts of different things to do and it is divided into two sections. One section is for the 2 – 5 set and the other for 5+ set.
Of note is that there is many spinning things and they all spin a bit differently. My favorite thing was a donut shaped wheel that was horizontal to the ground. One could stand or sit or lay on it and it would move.
My niece’s favorite was also a spinny thing in the smaller kids section. She liked it because she could push herself on it and spin really fast.
My nephew said that he liked the red rope climbing thing best. He, of course, climbed to the very top of of it and surveyed the grounds for quite some time.
They do have swings and from the «pusher» perspective, they were harder than other swings as the seats are low to the ground. However, this probably makes it easier for the kidlets to swing themselves.
My niece thinks it is one the best parks she’s been too, «Probably one of the funnest.»
They have 3 different slides, various bouncy toys, and 4 rope things to climb on. As well, they have a wading pool that operates during the summer.
You can check it out online, however, the photos are from the old version of the park.
My advice? Find yerself some small fry and drag them to the park. You’ll have a good time here even if they don’t!