Nana Ana's Playhouse

About

Check the weekly schedule the morning you go. This is a small playhouse that gives its floor over to private parties and events, and on the days it does, it shuts to everyone else for the rest of them — the venue says so on its own booking page, and one family drove over on a Saturday well inside the posted hours and were turned away at the door. The hours on the map listing are not the authority here. The venue's own schedule is.

Almost everything else follows from the size. Two reviewers describe the same room in opposite terms, one calling it not too big but full of things to do and the other calling it extremely small with too many children in it at once, and both are right depending which session you land in. That is why it sells timed two-hour slots rather than open admission, and why every child playing needs a pass of their own, crawlers included. What fills it is toys and themed play set-ups rather than a climbing structure — a home-scale room, and one that gets themed for the season — a pumpkin festival, a Valentine's party and a costumed-character morning all turn up in the reviews.

The consistent praise is that it is clean, and reviewer after reviewer says so. One regular puts the finer point on it: the room has been put back in order at the start of every session, which is an easy thing to promise and an unusual one to deliver. It suits under-sixes and works best at the bottom of that band, babies through about three. The owner is behind a good share of the five-star reviews: she runs the parties herself, and one host describes her planning theirs while on maternity leave.