Sycamore Park

The Sycamore Park is located between Lewis and Eastwood Southwood, you can get to it by heading south on Trabuco Road and then make a left on Remington, the park will be right in front of you. The Sycamore Park is quite big, however, the playground only consists of two play structures for toddlers and kids. There is no dedicated parking to this park so you will have to find street parking.

Not a lot of traffic to this playground. We were there on a weekday afternoon/evening, but only 5 kids around and after 15 mins of playing, we're the only family left. 

The first thing you will notice of the Sycamore Park playground is that, the play structures' colors are very odd. If you view them from afar, you almost can't tell there is a playground. The play structures only has three colors: blue, green and brown in different shades. What happen to the typical bright red and yellow? Who approve these dull colors on the children play structure? I guess we will never find out.

Beside that, the play structures are actually very well maintain. The 2 to 5 toddler play structure has one half turn slide, two staircases (one plastic one metal) and one climb bar. I applaud to whoever decided the toddlers need more than two ways to get on the platform, but with only one way down (the half turn slide), I'm not sure if that's the best way to design a toddler play structure.

I would also like to give a thumbs up on the big umbrella shade on top of both play structures. It's very thoughtful and really think of the children (and parents who is standing guard next to the structure) who are playing under the relentless California sun.

An interesting observation: the slide is actually about 3-4 inches higher than the platform. Not sure why they do it this way, but my daughter (2yo as of writing) was having a hard time to get into the slide (because toddler usually sit down on the platform and then slowly move forward to the slide, as oppose to adults who usually put their feet into the slide and then sit down), and because of that, she actually prefers the slide over at the 5 to 12 play structure.

The 5 to 12 play structure consists of two slides: a pair of straight down and a full spinal, with one staircase, one rock climb, one climb bar and one monkey bar to get onto the platform.

The play structure is very well layout, and multiple ways of getting onto the platform is definitely a nice touch. The slides on this play structure do not suffer the same "higher than platform" problem and my daughter enjoyed this more than slide on the 2 to 5 play structure. Both slides are quite steep and down speed can be really fast.

Next to the play structures, there are also a balance beam, two sets of swings and an up-side-down merry-go-around. 

One of the complains that I would like to point out here is, the sand is quite dirty. The sand quality is good, but there are a lot of debris from the trees and grasses surrounding the playground. Of course this is not a sandbox and I shouldn't expect too much from it, but I'm sure other kids will just playing with the sand no matter what, so I hope that the sand could be cleaner.

Pro: quite area, few traffic, new-ish play structure, umbrella shade on both structures

Con: strange choice of colors, no dedicated parking, dirty sand