Outside, it was 18 degrees and light snow was falling. Inside, it was 69 and dry.
Seventeen-month-old Cooper Tsoris kept his grandmother busy chasing after him in a huge New Berlin warehouse filled with playground equipment.
“He’s a motion machine,” Christine Sobczak said. “He just needs a place to run around.”
Calling Wisconsin winters “horrendous,” Sobczak said indoor playgrounds are “extremely necessary in this weather.”
Local entrepreneurs hope others agree.
At least three new indoor play centers have opened in the area since September, and one franchisee hopes to open a second site soon.
The Big Backyard in New Berlin features traditional park and backyard equipment – large wooden play sets and climbing walls with plastic slides. In contrast, Monkey Joe’s in Waukesha offers inflatable bounce houses, obstacle courses and slides.
Family Fun Land, which opened Dec. 8 in Germantown, has inflatables and a massive soft play set, as well as a slew of games similar to Chuck E. Cheese.
As inflatables explode in popularity, other businesses are jumping on board. Four Milwaukee-area gymnastics centers have added large bright-colored inflatables to boost their birthday party fun. And the Milwaukee Kickers offers to add an inflatable castle to its soccer field trips.
At a recent outing to Monkey Joe’s, Ben Steinbacher, 5, stopped jumping for a few seconds to explain the reason for the trend: “It’s really fun.”
Photo: Michael Sears.