Slide the City

By now, you’ve probably seen it on the news. The looooong green and blue water slide, a BIG version of the “Slip n’ Slide” you might have had in your front lawn as a kid. Slide the City is making the rounds through the U.S. and Canada, setting up its slide through sloping city streets everywhere. It even broke the world record for “Longest distance traveled on a slip and slide in one hour” this summer in Fort Worth, Texas.

Enthralled with the idea, we bought “early bird” tickets for the July event in Stamford, CT. It’s a pricey investment, even when you get the early purchase discount. You can choose your price based on one ride, three rides, or unlimited rides.

What we didn’t know at the time was that the slide’s length depends on the location, and what the localities will allow. The slide can range in length from approximately 600 to 1,000 feet. This was one of the shorter versions.

Bottom line: this was a fun ride! Our kids laughed the entire way down. It was worth trying once.

Happy kids!

However, here’s what you should know about Slide the City:

• Depending on the amount of slope, you may not have that great a ride. After an initial rush, a lot of this course was flat. We had to continually stand up, get a running start, and plop down on our inner tube to rush forward. Or push The Girl, who couldn’t be bothered to do it herself.

The grown-ups ended up doing this most of the way.

• Inner tubes are required to ride. You can purchase one with your ticket for $5.00.
• It’s a slippery surface, and we saw a lot of people falling. We wore swim shoes, and they worked well. You will lose flips flops!
• It’s worth signing up for the email alerting you when tickets go on sale, so you can take advantage of early bird rates. Don’t wait to purchase tickets for the day of the event, because they can sell out. We saw people turned away because they had reached their limit.
• Go early in the day, and/or expect long lines. We were assigned a voluntary start time of 2:00pm, which we ignored. That turned out to be a smart move, because the lines were crazy by noon. There was a lot of disorganization at this event, with people cutting in the line in front of us. They thought there were separate, shorter lines for single riders versus the longer line for groups/families, and they were making their way to those lines.It turned out that one line eventually broke off into those separate lines, but not until the very end. There was line rage, and the local police had to intervene at several points. The D.J. wasn’t providing clear instructions.
• There is a minimum age (five years) and height (42 inches) requirement, although we did see smaller people making their way down the slide.

Hey YOU! Go BIG!

Visit Slide the City for a list of upcoming 2015 events, still to take place in Montreal, Chicago, Colorado Springs, Salt Lake City, Hartford, Winston-Salem, and others.

*P.S. We’re also looking forward to a new event being produced by the same company, Lantern Fest. Hoping it comes to an area near us!

Here she comes! (Taken from my tube)