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Slide the City St. Louis: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Last weekend we did Slide the City in St. Louis and it was a mixed bag. My 8 year old had fun…my teen? Not so much. As for my hubs and I…sore. We got very sore.

slide the city

This is usually the place where I give my FCC disclosure saying hey, I got free tickets to do this review and how my opinions are always my own. Because I want to be honest with my readers. This is also the place where I’m sure you, gentle reader, roll your eyes. Oh, not another sponsored post you groan. Yep. And yes, I don’t think I’ve ever given a bad review on something I received for free. Because normally, If I’m sent a terrible product, I don’t blog about it. I’m a happy person, and I like to share good stuff with my readers.

The Good…

So, good stuff first! The volunteers were awesome and nice. One of my inner tubes had a leak, and I had no problem swapping it for a replacement. Volunteers were hosing down the lines, making on the fly repairs to the slide and offering to push people down the slide. It was well organized and the lines were orderly.

The radio stations that sponsored the event had trucks near the line pumping commercial free tunes! This made waiting so much easier.

The festival part was pretty good, with lots of food and drink for sale. The kids got a free beach ball and juice pouch from Shop N Save, another awesome event sponsor.

Mitch, my 8 year old, thought the slide was awesome! He wanted to do it a second time!

Slide the City St. Louis

…The Bad…

Market Street isn’t much of a hill, and there wasn’t enough water to keep people moving down the slide. There was a lot of starting and stopping. Just when you’d figure out how to keep sliding, you’d run into someone who didn’t. I even took a guy out at the ankles because he stood up in the middle of the slide! There was enough padding on the slide, so we were able to laugh it off and keep going.

My poor hubs and teenager, who are both around 6’3″, couldn’t fit enough of their torsos on the inner tubes. They only went down the slide once and ended up walking a good deal of that. Mostly, they stuck to the slide, rather than slipping on it.

…and the Ugly.

Maybe if the lines had moved faster we would have done it more times, or at least, Mitch would have. We were given four Unlimited tickets, and did the slide a total of six times (as in, the kid and I did it twice, with the hubs and teen only took one ride). I’ve read reviews of Slide the City in other towns, and this isn’t the only place where the slide moved too slow. Maybe it they could pump more water in? I don’t know what the answer is…especially after reading about Slide the City Pittsburgh where they had the opposite problem–no one could stop!

I’m thinking the solution is for Slide the City to get realistic and sell fewer tickets, and drop the unlimited rides. I haven’t heard of anyone who was able–or willing–to do the slide more than a few times. All day? No way. They issued tickets in ‘waves’ (time slots) in St. Louis, which may have made our event a little quicker than other towns. Personally, our wait was an hour at most…other towns reported 2-3 hours lines. 

If Slide the City is coming to your town, I would skip the unlimited tickets and get the Triple Slide at most. A single slide isn’t a bad idea. Get them early and look for a discount.