Find the Best Splash Pads in Ottawa
Helping you to find the BEST splash pads in Ottawa!
Water buckets that fill up and then spill over
The Ben Franklin Park Splash Pad is officially opening tomorrow, Friday July 12, 2019 at 3:00 PM.
Counsellor Keith Egli posted on his twitter and his website about the splash pad opening, but I like his friendly tweet to the mayor inviting him to spending time at the splash pad for the long weekend.
Five stars are not enough to rate the splash pad at Brewer Park in Ottawa South.
It’s probably closer to seven stars (out of five stars.) Five stars because there are so many water fountains and structures, six stars because it’s so big that it takes up two levels, and seven stars because there’s a water slide and a nearby bathroom. Wow.
Chapman Mills Main Street Park (West) Splash Pad is a splash pad in Barrhaven with a unique structure – a green dragon! The splash pad has a lot of jets and will get you wet for sure.
We’re a local Ottawa family who decided in the summer of 2012 to be tourists in our own city. There are over 100 splash pads in Ottawa and we made a point to visit them all!
That was a lot of work for our little monkey, but it was an adventure we enjoyed.
Now we’re well into the summer of 2019 and we’re spending some time revisiting some old favourites and checking out the new pads that are popping up in the west and east ends of the city. Stay tuned for new reviews.
Happy splashing!
The city has a list of splash pads, but they’ve put the information into a table. Great organization, but for some reason, you can’t highlight addresses (in a table) on the iPad to open it up in Google maps, so I’ve re-posted the list below without the table. (We use our iPad on the road quite often to find these water parks.)
*Asterisk means splash pad visited this summer (2015)
Splash pads are urban areas for water play (Wikipedia). Unlike outdoor pools or spray pools, there is no standing water and no lifeguards.
In Ottawa, splash pads can range from a simple wooden post that sprays water to more elaborate urban water parks with fountains, spray guns and troughs that dump water.
Over time, the old-school wooden post splash pads are being replaced with newer modern splash pads.
Here is the official City of Ottawa page about splash pads.
According to the city website, Ottawa’s splash pads will be working between May 17, 2019 to September 15, 2019, depending on the weather.
Please note, they also have a list of splash pads that are currently closed due to operational issues, or where some water features are out of service.
We’ve found from our experience that some splash pads have the water turned on at night, while others seem to run from 8AM to 8PM.
(Good to know, otherwise you might end up visiting a splash pad in the city before the water gets turned on for the day.) The lower level splash pad at Brewer Park was turned on at 8AM.
The city of Ottawa website has a super cool interactive map that lets you zoom into an area and see all of the splash pads. Their map is cool (pun intended) because it shows you which splash pads are accessible.
(Psst, we also have an interactive map of splash pads in the city that lets you search by water play structures at the park. Oh, and photos. Photos are cool.)
Note: Some of the information on our website comes from the City of Ottawa open data catalogue. OttawaSplashPads.ca is a work in progress and is not affiliated with the City of Ottawa or any organization.