This Englewood Enjoyable Manufacturing unit’s Acquired Willy Wonka Beat

If you’ve ever been a caregiver to somebody underneath the age of 10, you already know Soft Play; you simply won’t know the title. For greater than 4 many years, the corporate has been designing and crafting play tools for malls (a two-story reproduction of the Paw Patrol Lookout Tower in Minnesota’s Mall of America), museums (an 18-foot-diameter mannequin of the solar within the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida), and personal purchasers (a large, climbable scorching canine at Coors Field). And regardless of the place you encounter Soft Play’s brightly painted, barely squishy-to-the-touch sculptures, they seemingly hail from the identical place: an industrial facility in southeast Englewood.

Pieces begin as 16-by-four-by-three-foot blocks of Styrofoam, that are roughly formed by computer-controlled slicing machines. From there, Soft Play’s seven sculptors use a hodgepodge of instruments—fillet knives, jigsaws, horse brushes, sandpaper—to chisel in all the pieces from log bark and tire tread to eyeballs and dragon wings.

Following the sculpting and chiseling, the works are coated with fiberglass, molded with Soft Play’s signature delicate foam, coated with rubber for sturdiness, and painted by hand by a group of six artists.

Today, Soft Play has greater than 40,000 installations in 200-plus nations. But you don’t must journey overseas to get pleasure from them. These three indoor playscapes with Soft Play parts within the Denver metro space are good for letting youngsters burn off extra power on chilly winter days.

3 Soft Play Playscapes within the Denver Metro Area

Colorado Mills Mall

Soft Play designed this space-themed purchasing middle play space in collaboration with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (which additionally consulted on the Cherry Creek Mall’s Dinosaur Gulch play house, ensuring the Ankylosaurus and T. rex have been paleontologist-approved). Made to evoke the floor of the crimson planet, Colorado Mills’ Mars Outpost features a land rover, tunnels via dunes, and a photo voltaic panel slide.

Paul Derda Recreation Center

In addition to the free indoor playground—which has Colorado touches like bear and mountain lion heads overlooking two slides, a snowcapped mountain, and a rock-climbing Jeep—Soft Play was accountable for many parts of this Broomfield recreation middle’s indoor aquatic pool, together with an octopus slide.

Denver International Airport

The subsequent time you’re delayed with youngsters who received’t cease operating laps on the shifting walkways, take them to Concourse A, which has a new-in-November Soft Play aviation-travel-themed play space, or Concourse C, the place an alien spacescape opened in December 2024. Littles get out their wiggles on the flying saucer slide, whereas adults will respect the aesthetic nod to DIA conspiracy theories.

Read More: 10 of the Best Indoor Playgrounds In and Around Denver