Exploration Place’s $25 million playscape opens on Friday. What you need to know:
Families love Wichita’s Exploration Place: For the past three years, the children’s museum at 300 N. McLean has drawn record crowds of about 400,000 a year, said museum president and CEO Adam Smith.
But since the museum opened in April 2000, the bulk of those visitors have come when the weather is unpleasant — when it’s too hot, too cold or too windy for kids to play outside.
That’s about to change, though, said Smith. On Friday, the museum will open its new $25 million Adventure Playscape — a 6 1/2 acre playground that will include 10 individual, Kansas-themed playgrounds, a massive cascading water feature, an elevated outdoor concession stand and lots of towering playground equipment that will let kids imagine they’re flying an airplane, driving a combine, blasting off in a rocket ship or rolling down one of the Flint Hills on a foggy day.
The playscape, which was inspired by Tulsa’s hugely successful Gathering Place, has taken the museum four and a half years to conceptualize, fundraise for, design, test and build. And though Smith doesn’t want to appear overconfident, he said the playground could help Exploration Place double its annual attendance and make bad-weather days the museum’s slower days.
Though his business plan and budget call for the playground to raise attendance to 600,000 a year, Smith said he wouldn’t be surprised if it helped the museum double its attendance — or more — in the coming years.
He also is confident that the playscape will draw people from outside of Wichita. Last week, the museum put up a preview of the attraction on social media, targeting it at potential visitors from Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Dallas and Omaha. The post went somewhat viral, Smith said, getting more than a 250,000 views and getting comments like “Where is this?” and “Road trip to Kansas?”
“While I’ve got a head full of worries about the operation and just making sure it all goes smoothly, I’m pretty confident that kids are going to love it,” he said.
Doors open on Friday
Though the public will get its first look at the new playscape on Friday — just in time for USD 259’s spring break — large groups of people have already experienced it, Smith said. And feedback has been beyond encouraging.
On a cold day in December, members of the Junior League of Wichita, who raised $2.3 million to pay for the interactive water play area, got an early look at the centerpiece feature, which will include waterfalls, spurting jets, and pumps and water wheels that fully function only when visitors work together.
The museum has staged five test events so far, inviting members of a “beta test group” to come play so that the staff could make sure everything was working the way it should. The final test is scheduled for Sunday, March 8, and Exploration Place is expecting 2,500 people.
Responses from the testers have made Smith and his project managers appreciate the days, weeks and months they spent thinking and overthinking every detail of the playground’s design, from how to maximize shade to how to make play areas accessible to all ability levels.
“The vision is, ‘What is the most epic playground that we can build in the six acres?’” Smith said. “We were inspired by a handful of other people that really have leaned into the idea of destination play, the idea a playground can be an actual tourist destination.”
Admission to the attraction will be included in the price of an Exploration Place ticket — a change the museum made last summer in anticipation of the playscape opening. Previously, people could buy an entry ticket then add experiences like the Dome Theater a la carte. Last summer, admission rose from $12 to $20 for adults and from $10 to $15 for children and seniors, and now, tickets include access to everything.
Members will be admitted for free, and they’ll also get a sneak preview of the plascaype during regular museum hours from Monday, March 9, through Thursday, March 12.
Though a couple of the features won’t be fully functional until the threat of a freeze passes, most notably the water cascades, visitors will be able to experience the almost-finished playground starting on Friday. Smith, though, wants people to know that the plant- and tree-heavy landscaping won’t be completed until later this spring.
A tour of the playscape
Visitors who enter the playscape from the lobby will be greeted by one of the not-quite-finished playgrounds. It’s called “Foggy Flint Hills” and consists of a collection of turf covered hills that kids can roll down or crawl through. (Smith says people have told him the hills look like Teletubbies habitat.)
When it gets warmer, the museum will be able to turn a machine that will create a constant layer of fog over the hills. A high-tech machine creates fog from water vapor, and the fog is hearty enough that strong Kansas winds don’t blow it away, Smith said.
Next up is a playground called Sunflower Meadow, which was built to reflect the lifecycle of a sunflower. It has a few towering flowers and one fallen flower head that kids can crawl inside. This playground is the only one that’s age-restricted: It’s reserved for children 5 and under so that they can play freely without being intimidated by big kids. A long, curved bench for parents is built into the edge of the playground.
Visitors will then encounter Treetop Tower, an extra-large rope climbing tower that’s set back in the shade of the trees. Daring kids can climb all the way to the top of the 23-foot sculpture while the smaller ones can play on hammock swings closer to the base. Smith said that Tulsa’s Gathering Place not only inspired Adventure Playscape but its staff also provided valuable advice to Exploration Place during design. The Tulsans said that their rope tower was consistently one of their top attractions.
As visitors venture deeper into the playground toward the Water Play Cascades, they’ll encounter a large, square-shaped building that represents another big step for Exploration Place. Inside the structure are not only six individual family restrooms, where visitors can also change into swimsuits or out of wet clothes, but the structure also houses a new concession area big enough to have its own commercial kitchen. And it will serve far more than the pickles and popcorn the snack bar inside the museum now offers. Called “Graze,” it will serve things like hamburgers and tots, flatbread pizzas, wrap sandwiches and salads.
Just beyond the counter where people will place their orders is a collection of picnic tables shaded by trees, a scene reminiscent of the seating area each year at the Wichita Riverfest food court outside of Century II.
Graze is an important addition to Exploration Place, Smith said, because families are much more likely to stay all day while visiting Adventure Playscape, and they won’t want to leave to get lunch.
“We’ll need more than just a snack,” Smith said. “There are a lot of people who are going to need a meal.”
Just beyond the concession area is the centerpiece of the playground: The Water Play Cascades. Smith doesn’t call it a splash pad: It’s more than that, he said. Visitors will be able to climb, splash, play and get themselves completely soaked in the feature, which has dancing water jets and climbable boulders. The water won’t be turned on until later this spring and will be turned off again in the fall. But kids can scramble around on the boulders even when the water is off.
The next stop beyond the Water Cascades is the Sensory Garden, which Smith said was included as a way to encourage people to utilize all their senses (except taste) and give them a break from all the excitement the playground offers. It includes instruments like a xylophone, whisper dishes that use science to send sound traveling a long distance, a winding maze hidden in tall prairie grass, and a five-ton “turning stone” on a spindle designed so that even a little kid can turn it.
“The other nine areas are really about getting kids moving — climbing, playing, swinging, sliding, all those classic play things,” Smith said. “At a place like Exploration Place, though, sometimes our kids get overstimulated. We wanted to have a garden that was a place where we can bring the kids to cool down a little bit and have a different kind of experience.”
The stimulation resumes beyond the Sensory Garden, where visitors will discover a river-side playground called Agriculture Overlook. Kids can roll down a steep hill to access towering stalks of wheat and an authentic-looking combine that they can pretend to drive. At the top of the hill is a swing set whose frame looks like a center pivot irrigation system common in Kansas farm fields.
The next stop contains some of the colorful pieces visitors driving down First Street have been able to see for months, including that towering yellow rocket. The Flight Adventure playground, a tribute to Wichita’s aviation history, includes a 30-foot-tall city scape designed for climbing that’s topped with a replica Beechcraft Staggerwing, complete with a cockpit kids can play in and a twisty slide that serves as an exit.
Nearby, another climbing toy has a replica Cessna Citation jet complete with pilot and passenger seats. The playground also has a control tower and access to that 40-foot climbable rocket, designed to evoke the rocket that kids used to play in at Riverside Park. This one is fitted with a daring, twisty exit slide.
And speaking of slides, on the edge of the aviation playground is a feature called Slide Hill. It includes six slides of different heights and steepness that require different levels of daring. Some will be more inviting to tiny kids while others will attract older, braver sliders.
The playscape will also have a zip line that will feature two side-by-side lines.
The final stop in the playground is Bison Hill, which includes the big creature that’s also been visible from First Street. He’s 20-feet tall, and visitors can climb up inside of him to play. At his base are tents, canoes and a pretend campfire.
Smith said that designers intentionally situated the bison and the rocket so that they’d serve as ambassadors who could quietly entice passing drivers.
“If you remember, we used to have an electric sign here,” he said, pointing to the hill where the rocket resides and the buffalo grazes. “For various reasons, I’m not a big fan of electric signs. For me, I think these will do.”
More to explore
Adventure Playscape will keep the same hours as Exploration Place: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day but Thursday, when the museum is open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. But during spring break, the play area will stay open until 8 p.m. each night. It’ll also keep later hours during the summer.
The playground has been designed so that it’s usable after dark as well, Smith said, and the nighttime vibe is pretty special.
Smith said that he’s more than ready to open the doors: People who visit Exploration Place have been able to see the construction as it’s progressed since the June 2024 groundbreaking, and they’ve been itching to be let loose onto the playscape.
“The construction has been the greatest live exhibit,” Smith said.
The finished product features the latest in playground safety, he said. Most of the play areas are covered in bouncy, squishy poured-in-place rubber, and the playground was designed with the help of safety experts. Exploration Place also hired a shade consultant who advised how to position playground pieces and build subtle shade structures to keep equipment from getting too hot.
The addition of the playscape will fundamentally change Exploration Place, but for the better, Smith said. Exploration Place recently added 24-hour security to protect their playscape investment, and Smith has had to hire a grounds crew for the first time in his six years as museum director. Those workers will not only attend to the 288 newly planted trees and 40,000 plants but also keep the playscape maintained.
“One of my pledges, to our donors and to our community, is we’re not just going to build it and let it deteriorate like parks sometimes do,” he said. “We’re going to build it, and we’re going to look after it and keep it beautiful forever.”
This story was originally published March 8, 2026 at 5:51 AM.
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