How Valley Fair can improve the kids playground.

On rainy days, the Valley Fair Mall in San Jose California is a great place to take the kids to get some exercise when they start to get cabin fever.  Since other parents are also feeling claustrophobic on these days, the play area can get pretty crowded and it can be hard to keep track of your children in all the chaos.  There are two things that the mall could do to make it easier for parents to watch their children; lower the wall by the slide and put a gate on the entrance.

The picture below is a representation of the play area.  The entrance is at the bottom and the play area is surrounded by a bench like you find in booth seats at a restaurant with a high back.

Several times while watching my own children, I have watched other small children leave the play area and head into the busy mall. Parents near the entrance usually stop the child and eventually the child’s parent will come looking for them.  This usually happens because the parent has two children and while the parent is watching one child, the other slips away.  It is just a matter of time until one child escapes without being stopped.

To solve this problem, Valley Fair should install a small gate at the entrance.  This will keep small children from walking off on their own.

The other problem stems from the large wall by the slide.  5 year old boys can climb the wall quite easily and usually take the fast route of jumping down.  Each day the older kids narrowly miss jumping on top of the smaller kids playing below the wall.

Another problem with the wall is how it blocks the vision of parents.  Because of the wall, there are only a couple of seats where you can see the whole play area.  If you are not in those seats, then the wall creates a blind spot where you cannot see your children.  As soon as you kid enters into a blind spot you need to stand up to walk around the wall to see your child.   See the picture below.

As you move left and right from the seat behind the wall, the blind spot also shifts.  The same blinds spot exists for parents sitting on the right hand side of the wall.

The only place that you can sit and see the entire play area is marked with an "X" below.

By removing the wall and adding a gate to the entrance, Valley Fair can greatly improve it's play area.  This will allow parents to see their children at all times and prevent small children from wandering off alone when parents are distracted.