Tasked with entertaining the energetic six-year-old, my family took her to pretty much every age-appropriate attraction that the Denver metro area has to offer — or at least the ones she found interesting. Sorry, Elitch Gardens, Water World and Lakeside, she's not into rollercoasters.
After three weeks roaming Denver, Olive is a certified expert on the most fun things to do while visiting. Now, she is sharing her wisdom with other Colorado families struggling to keep their children amused.
Here are my niece's totally subjective reviews of fourteen kid-friendly activities in and around the city, listed from lowest to highest rated:
Butterfly Pavilion — 7/10
The Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster is a local gem, allowing guests to explore a rainforest environment complete with tarantulas, hissing cockroaches and nearly 2,000 butterflies, the latter of which flutter freely and land on lucky visitors. It has delighted children and adults alike for over thirty years, opening in 1995 as the world's first stand-alone, nonprofit invertebrate zoo accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.Unfortunately, it turns out that Olive is terrified of butterflies — a fear she had never expressed before this moment — earning the Butterfly Pavilion the lowest spot on this list. She spent the afternoon dodging the butterflies and asking to go home. And no, she did not hold Rosie the tarantula.
Downtown Aquarium — 7/10
The Downtown Aquarium in Denver offers an immersive look into the underwater world of sharks, turtles and numerous species of fish. Visitors can walk underneath giant fish tanks as sea creatures swim above, touch and feed live stingrays, and even view tigers and real-life mermaids.Olive says she liked seeing the fish, but she found touching the stingray to be "sticky and wet and weird." Her biggest issue with the aquarium, which resulted in its seven out of ten rating, was a waterfall feature that slightly splashed her as she walked by. "I didn’t want to get wet," she explains.
Meow Wolf — 8/10
Meow Wolf's Convergence Station in downtown Denver is one of the city's newer tourist attractions. Opened in late 2021, it is essentially a massive interactive art museum with many opportunities for kids to play in the exhibits as adults attempt to follow the storyline. Guests can explore four levels of floor-to-ceiling, visually stunning displays that tell a story of multiversal travel through alien worlds, created by more than 350 artists."Most of it, I loved a lot," Olive says. However, there was one "koala whatever thingy" that left her feeling disturbed. She called it "weird and kind of scary."
Englewood Farm and Train at Belleview Park at 1111 West Belleview Avenue in Englewood.
Hannah Metzger
Englewood Farm and Train — 8/10
The Englewood Farm and Train at Belleview Park was one of my favorite places to go as a child, as I grew up in nearby Aurora. There is a cute little train that circles the area, a long creek where kids catch crawdads, two playgrounds, lots of grassy fields to run, and a petting zoo that features goats, cows, chickens, pigs and alpacas.Olive enjoyed the vast majority of her day at the farm, especially the train ride, but her memory (and rating) is soured by the fact that she slipped on some algae while walking in the creek and got her pants wet. If there wasn't a creek, she says she would rate the farm a ten.
Boondocks Food and Fun — 8/10
Originating in Northglenn, Boondocks Food and Fun has four locations across Colorado and Utah. We visited the Parker location, featuring an arcade, go karts, bowling, bumper boats, a rope course, laser tag, mini golf and more. With so many options, the entertainment center provides hours of indoor and outdoor amusement.Olive had a lot of fun there and took home an ungodly amount of candy earned from tickets in the arcade. So what kept Boondocks from getting a ten, or even a nine? "My suit changed colors during laser tag, so another kid thought I wasn't her teammate. And in the bumper boats, I got soaking wet," she says.
Children's Museum of Denver — 9/10
The Children's Museum of Denver in downtown offers endless educational entertainment for children of all ages, with exhibits centered around investigation, imagination, exploration and creation. Some of Olive's experiments included woodworking, using physics to guide balls through a track, and building and launching her own paper rocket.Suddenly feeling coy, Olive's review for the museum is incredibly nondescript. She declines to reveal her favorite or least favorite aspects of the visit. Did she like the museum? "A lot," she answers mysteriously.
Colorado Bounce Company — 9/10
Colorado Bounce Company is a family-owned indoor playground in Lakewood, comprised primarily out of bounce houses. Its offerings include a Wipeout-style inflatable obstacle course, blow-up warped walls, various slides and a massive kangaroo jumper. We sought out this small business after Olive told me she had never been in a bouncy castle before (her parents later revealed this was a lie).As a super fan of American Ninja Warrior, Colorado Bounce Company was Olive's dream come true. She spent hours running the obstacle course over and over again, which she called "the ninja course." Her only complaint is that she "wasn't really good at the warped wall," though that didn't stop her from sprinting head-first into it at least two dozen times.
Denver Zoo — 9/10
The Denver Zoo is perhaps the most classic kid-friendly attraction in the city. We visited on a particularly active day and got to watch the elephants participate in a feeding/trick demonstration, see the hippos play under a fountain and catch a peek at the new baby mountain goat.Olive gravitated toward the more hands-on activities, including building a log obstacle course in the Wild Village play area and riding the carousel, which she wished she could stay on "forever." However, the undisputed highlight of her zoo visit was getting her face painted as a rainbow tiger. Being a rainbow tiger felt "amazing," she says, "I feel like everyone should be a rainbow tiger." The long line for the face painter is the only thing that kept the zoo from scoring a ten.
Casa Bonita — 10/10
Having secured a reservation one month in advance, Olive was lucky enough to get to partake in one of Colorado's most iconic establishments: Casa Bonita. In addition to having dinner, our family enjoyed many of the business's entertainment offerings, such as the puppet show, Black Bart's Cave, the arcade, some free balloon animals and the occasional cliff diving demonstration.Seemingly ignoring all of that, Olive says her favorite part of the Casa Bonita visit was "the treat that we got at the end," referring to the honey-soaked sopapillas — the first she had eaten in her life. Apparently, that alone was enough to earn Casa Bonita a perfect score.
Cirque du Soleil — 10/10
Olive's Denver visit coincided with Cirque du Soleil's tour stop in the city. Cirque performed its ECHO show in the parking lot of Ball Arena from July 12 through August 17, featuring 53 circus performers and nearly 150 total cast members showcasing juggling, acrobatics and hair hanging. Thanks to her other (richer) aunt, Olive scored front row seats to the show."I really liked it so much," she says. "I didn’t even want to leave because I loved it a lot." Though the circus has since left town, Denver is a frequent stop for Cirque, coming to the city every year since 2022 after taking a break due to the pandemic.
Lava Island — 10/10
Though it has since spread to several states, Lava Island originated in Aurora in 2018, and its flagship location is still one of the best places to bring a child in Colorado. The massive indoor playground features a trampoline park, foam pits, a tricycle track and never-ending rows of jungle gyms that put Chuck E. Cheese to shame.We went to Lava Island twice because Olive loved it so much. Her favorite activities were jumping off of a platform into an airbag and sliding down the side of the central volcano; though she was too scared to go down the metal slide on the volcano after watching me fly off of it at approximately 100 miles per hour.
Colorado Rockies game — 100/10
Even as the Colorado Rockies suffer through a historically bad season, Coors Field provides a delightful ambience to spend the day. And when we visited on August 17, the Rockies actually pulled off an impressive comeback win; 6-5 over the Arizona Diamondbacks after trailing Arizona 4-1 at the start of the seventh inning.For Olive, the scale-breaking score of 100 out of ten is not due to the Rockies' rare victory, it is "basically because of the treats" she got at the game, she says — caramel corn, rainbow Dippin’ Dots, cotton candy, pizza, french fries and chocolate-covered strawberries. Sorry, parents.
16th Street — 1,000,000/10
You read that correctly. It looks like the 16th Street makeover was worth it because it earned the mall a score of one million, according to Olive. We spent a day walking to each of the newly-added mini play structures along 16th Street, including the Aspen tree bird nest at Glenarm Place, the bee hive at Lawrence Street, the metal drum platforms at Curtis Street and the cowboy fish at Larimer Street. We also played video games and took photos using some of the touch screens lining 16th Street.This is notably the only free activity on this list, though we did stop at Ichigo Matcha to buy some strawberry matcha soft serve, which Olive calls "the best ice cream of my life."
Pedicabs — 1,000,100/10 (WINNER)
Finally, Olive's number-one favorite thing to do in Denver is riding pedicabs downtown. She found the bike taxis so fun that we ended up using them nearly every day to travel mere blocks, to the point where some pedicab drivers let us set our own rates because the trips were so quick. It really is the simple things: Feeling the wind in your hair and listening to Kidz Bop play from a portable speaker duct-taped to a bike seat.In conclusion, Olive says Denver is "amazing" and it has convinced her that "cities are better than towns." City girls up.
