Surrey Park

“Can we go to the train park?”
This is one of our favourite local-to-us parks. Easy car parking in the aquatic centre’s large lot, *almost* completely fenced with gates, three cute spring riders including Landscape Structure’s two-kid plane, a new-in-2018 roller slide, and best of all is the ground level train that the little one drove for 30 minutes. The pine cones scattered around the sand were also a big hit as he made piles of them and lined them up along the benches. 

All the equipment is fairly close together with good sight lines. Just behind the roller slide is the only section without fencing as it opens up to the rest of the park behind.
The toddler climber has stairs, a rounded Cozy Climber climbing wall, slides, a tube slide, crawl tunnel, and tic-tac-toe wall. The larger climber has stairs, lots of metal ladders, and two slides. The bridge part out to the twirly slide always feels tippy to me, but it may be my imagination. While little kids can access the top platforms, there are lots of openings and high drop offs. Both structures are older, and keep getting repainted to prolong their life. And aesthetics. 
Beside the toddler play structure are four baby swings, and while there WAS an adaptive swing for a while, it’s been put back to a regular swing. Odd. So ignore that photo in the gallery, it’s no longer there. 
The playground butts up against the fencing of Surrey Pool and the twirly slide there looks sooooo fun. After numerous unanswered emails to Dorval, I went to the Surrey Pool directly and found out that the splash pad IS for the general public, is FREE and follows the same hours as the pool (8:30am-8pm). Strange that the only splash pad Dorval ever mentions is the one at Walters Park. 
The splash pad is completely fenced and within the boundaries of the pool, so you need to go into the Aquatic Centre and ask to go in. When I went, they said they weren’t open yet but offered to unlock the gate for us. Nice, buuuuut we hadn’t actually brought our suits with us. I’ve added some pictures of the area into the photo gallery and you can see it’s quite small but with some fun products from Pointe Claire’s Vortex including the pelican, spinning flower, dumping bucket, a cute toddler sprayer and a water cannon. The only spot to sit is a picnic table that’s under a shade shelter. It’s a good spot if you just want to cool off, and great if you absolutely need a (real) bathroom nearby!

When you’re done at the park, wander down the path to the NEXT play structure (for big kids!). This one has a central metal ladder, high slides, and a climbing wall. There’s also a water fountain at the back of the building and you’ll see the tennis courts and an awesome skate park which hosts Dorval’s annual SkateFest. We had our snack here and then ran up and down and up and down and up and down the ramps.
What’s also impressive here is the PLANE SPOTTING. There were some huge 747s that came over us while we were there and both kids were like “Woooooooow.”

Across the gravel road and right next to the airport fence is Dorval’s Dog Run. You can read about it on this Facebook Group. The hours of the dog run are 7am-10pm and all dogs must have a valid license. Just be aware if you are visiting the back of the park with little kids that most people have their dogs off-leash and we’ve had MANY run at us while we were in the skate park and plane watching.  

NEW in 2016: Dorval has built an insane looking (in a good way) BMX/mountain bike course directly behind the skate park and the tennis courts. I wrote an entirely separate post for it HERE (with video!)
You can read more about the opening and the bike trail in this Gazette Article

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