DiG PDX - Oregon's Largest Indoor Sandbox

About

Parents keep coming back to the same feature: a parent section in the middle of the room, so you can sit down with a snack and still see your child digging. A parent of a four-year-old names that layout as the thing they love, a grandparent watching a two-and-a-half-year-old credits the clean sand and a washing station that is easy to get to, and families who held parties here describe actually sitting and talking while the children played. Clean comes up again and again.

The sand is the reason to come, and the venue takes it seriously: three sandboxes themed as dinosaurs, a construction site and a beach, filled with silica-free aragonite sand from the Bahamas that is sanitized daily, with the trucks, fossils and buckets supplied and outside toys kept out. Shoes and socks are both banned in the sand, for adults as well as children, so dress everyone for bare feet and dust. It is built mainly for preschoolers, though children up to twelve can play.

Two rules catch people out. A child with a runny nose or a cough will be asked to come back another day, and open play is no place for an informal birthday: no cake, balloons or presents. Holidays and school breaks switch to reservation-only tickets, so check before you drive over.