Come Play Indoor Playground at Life Community Church, Paso Robles

2021 Update: The playplace links are all broken so I removed them. I suspect this means  it closed to the public during the pandemic – but I haven’t confirmed that.

Here’s the church’s Facebook page if you’d like to further research it.

A few weeks ago, on a rainy day, the kids and I decided to check out the Come Play indoor playground at Life Community Church. I’ve been wanting to check it out for awhile now after seeing the ads on Facebook. “Come Play” is the actual name of the place, which I didn’t realize.  The facility is in a large industrial building with four dedicated indoor play spaces for bounce houses, sports balls, toys and a giant play structure. As far as I know, there are no outdoor play spaces there. Come Play is located at 3770 Ruth Way in the industrial area alongside Highway 101 between Paso and Templeton.

We liked it! Here are some tips, pictures and a video from our time there:

Here’s our video review we did giving a little overview of the whole place. My favorite part of the video is my 3 year old’s maniacal laughter at the end of the ball segment lol.

Before leaving for this activity I intended to look up how to get there ahead of time, but in typical me fashion I ended up researching the place on my phone in my driveway, about two seconds before leaving. Then I noted the general area it was in and decided I could wing it without any directions. I bet you can guess how that turned out.

I got lost. Surprise! This is what its building looks like from the front. I passed it, but only once this time.

But then I saw a minivan. Thinking that surely this minivan mom is in search of some rainy day indoor sanity too, I just followed her. And, sure enough, she was headed to the church! Score. That was also a bonus because I wouldn’t have known where to park or how to enter the play place without copying her. Copying other moms … pretty sure that one is in the official parent survival guide. I didn’t get a picture of her van because that’s just creepy, you guys.

So, once you find the Life Community Church building, you park in the parking lot behind it.

Then enter the play place through the white door marked space B.

Once you’re in, pay the nice ladies at the sign-in table (again, that’s $5 for one child or $10 per family). And, yeah, cash only. So that’s kind of a bummer. I almost never have cash on me.

Remove all shoes and stash them in these nice buckets lined up on the floor next to the sign-in table. Or, there’s also a shoe cubby near the play structure, which I’ll get to later.

Some tips on shoes. Make sure you and your kids wear socks, since shoes are coming off. Otherwise the kids’ little bare feet will get gross. Well, grosser than usual.

I had on sneakers without socks for me, so I left my shoes on. At first. But then eventually the guilt set in that a lot of the other adults had shoes off, too. And who wants to be the asshole who gets their gross shoes all over the nice clean church mats? Taking shoes off as a mom is no big inconvenience. But getting them back on, my friends, is quite the conundrum. Because pausing to get your shoes on AND tying them while your small children are running in opposite directions means you’re just going to be shoeless to places like, say, the bathroom. Which is icky. I know, because it happened to me. No bueno, gals. No bueno. It’d be much easier to have worn my trusty flip flops to stash in my backpack and fling on at any given moment.

Anyway, back to the play place. It all starts off with a large room with two bounce houses: A little one for ages 3 and younger and a larger bounce house next to it for the older kids. My kids are 1 and 3, so I liked the little one.

Here’s the same room from another angle. You see that nice row of chairs opposite the bounce houses? If your kids are the same ages as mine, YOU KNOW there’s zero chance for you to sit there. Because your kids will always find something they need from you, even mid-bounce.

From there we went into the ball room, which is basically a large open gym-type area with a basketball hoop and a bunch of balls to throw around. I liked it because it was a open, boxy space where I could easily see the kids at any angle and there wasn’t too much that they could get into or fight over.

And they had space to run.

And hold all the things.

Expel that energy, little ones! Expel.

After that, we went to the toy room. So. Many. Toys. Like, any toy you’d ever want is in this room. Noisy toys, light-up toys, wooden toys, dolls. Even a little baby slide. It’s basically Santa’s Workshop.

I think I actually had time to sit down in this room!

Here’s another angle:

You can see the restroom is off the toy area, and so are the snack tables. We brought crackers and water. Hopefully I never get put in charge of snack when the kids are in school 😂.  Oh and look, the baby made a little friend here.

Inside the restroom there’s a step stool so kids can reach the sink. It also has a changing table. All very thoughtful additions.

Back in the toy room, the little slide was fun because we don’t have anything like that at our house. I know this moment captured in time looks cute but I’m pretty sure my daughter is shoving her brother out of the way here. Swell.

Lastly, we checked out the fourth play area, which holds that giant indoor play structure you see on the Come Play advertisements. It’s right off the toy room behind a little gate.

Fun fact: The play structure’s tunnels and tubes actually run over the toy room.

The play structure room has those other shoe cubbies I was talking about. And another row of spectator chairs. Again, I can’t speak to the comfort level of the chairs because I didn’t have two seconds to sit.

I was busy chasing little man up this giant plush staircase.

And out the gate.

Which brings me to this small venting sesh: My daughter isn’t old enough to play anywhere unsupervised yet. So our days consist of me chasing one of the kids at any given time so they are always in the same general area. Often times with some level of protest from them. #sorrynotsorry, kids!

I joke, but this age of 1 and 3 is frustrating af. And it’s seriously making outdoor parks not fun because there’s so much more for the baby to impale himself on while I’m helping his sister climb/swing/do anything.

So having an indoor play area was a welcome change to all that. Although there was still a lot of running and corralling on my part.

Anyway, the play structure is basically a very tall series of climbing platforms, nets and tube tunnels with a plastic slide that brings kids back down to the ground level. There’s also another exit (or entrance?) with an obstacle course-type feature of hanging punching bag things. Kind of reminded me of a carnival fun house.

One thing you should know is once your kid is up there, they’re basically on their own until they come back down. I mean, if my 3 year old needed help or if she didn’t reply when I called I was prepared to climb up there in a heartbeat, lugging the baby with me (and how fun does that sound?!). But, in general, parents aren’t up there. There were a few times where I lost sight of my daughter while she was navigating the tunnels. So there’s a degree of trust that you need to have. Which I know can be hard. I didn’t have it with the baby (of course), so I didn’t let him get farther than the top of the stairs. But for my 3 year old, I never took my eyes off the play structure’s exits so I knew she was up there somewhere.  I just called out to her when I couldn’t see her, and she replied.

Plus there’s a bunch of other moms there who totally get it and willing to help you out. When I went, there was a nursing mom with her newborn baby latched.  When that mom couldn’t get up to her crying toddler in the structure, another mom climbed up there to help out.  So don’t worry other mamas, we got you.
That’s all for Come Play! We will definitely be back . Hope to see you there 👧🏼✌🏻👶🏼.