AAA State of Play

06/06/2026

Quick one for the school administrators and parks directors out there.

Every commercial playground in America is supposed to follow a standard called ASTM F1487. It covers fall heights, use zones, entrapment hazards, and surfacing depth. If your playground was installed without an ASTM-compliant inspection, you’re sitting on a liability problem and probably don’t know it.

If you haven’t had a CPSI walk your playground in the last 12 months, that’s the call to make this summer. Doesn’t have to be us. Just somebody who knows what to look for.

06/05/2026

Three years ago we installed this playground. Drove by it last month.

Every panel still intact. Every climber still working. Every swing still hanging where we hung it.

A lot of playgrounds in this country don’t make it to year five without somebody having to fix something major. We build ours to last longer than that.

06/04/2026

Two Top Khamun Playground System.

Most schools we work with end up building two playgrounds because nobody told them they could build one structure that works for kindergarten AND fifth grade at the same time. We told them.

One structure. Two age zones. Same square footage. Done.

06/03/2026

Ever called a playground company and asked what something costs?

They send a salesperson. Then a brochure. Then five emails. Then a quote three weeks later that still doesn’t make sense.

We got tired of that, so we put every price on the website. Sale prices too. No login. No form.

No “request a quote.” Just the price.

Link in first comment.

06/03/2026

📍Little Lamb Preschool, Littleton, CO

Lively preschoolers can now slide, crawl, and bounce their way to learning more about Noah's Ark story.

Shoot us a dm if you are interested in adding a new creative playground in your school today!

We love our new Noah's Ark play structure from AAA State of Play!

05/27/2026

Most playground surfacing is flat. A pad of poured rubber. A field of turf. Whatever's cheapest to install and easiest to inspect.

The industry treats the surface as the thing kids fall on.

We treat it as the thing kids play on.

At St. Jude, hills are built underneath the turf. The whole playground reads as natural terrain. Kids were running up the hills, sliding down, climbing them, sitting on them — without a single additional structure.

When the surface itself has terrain, the playground gets more play value without taking up more square footage. The hills become climbers. The slopes become slides. The same footprint does twice the job for the next 20 years.

05/26/2026

Last day of school in Indianapolis. Fifth and sixth graders were still on the playground.

The industry builds for K–4 and calls it done. Most schools watch their older kids get pushed off by fifth grade; a swing set if they're lucky, nothing if they're not.

We built this so every grade could use it. Big climbers for the oldest. Gaga ball for the middle grades. Curved benches as social zones for the kids who just want to talk.

A school owns its playground for 20 years. Every grade walks through it. We build for all of them.

05/25/2026

We screwed up last month. Shipped the wrong structure to a customer who trusts us with installs across their locations.

It was on us. We fixed it.

I am telling you because most vendors do not do this. They bury it. They blame the dealer. They blame the customer. They blame freight.

The vendors who cannot acknowledge a mistake when you ask about it are the ones who will blame you in year three when something else goes wrong.

05/23/2026

Less than 12 months from install. Two thousand square feet of surfacing failing. Three seams pulling apart. Large sections unfinished.

Customer called the installer. Installer dodged the call.

That is how I ended up at this playground. Not because I sold it. Because nobody else was picking up.

The equipment does not fail buyers in this industry. The vendors who optimize for the sale and not the next 20 years fail buyers.

Every playground needs an owner for the next 20 years. Not just an installer.

05/22/2026

Four weeks ago I had never opened our ERP. Never touched Acumatica. Did not know what half of it did.

Today the website is live. ERP synced. HubSpot rebuilt. Every pipeline running. I built an image generation tool from scratch. All of it. By myself.

We compete with billion-dollar brands who have whole agency teams and six-month timelines. They cannot iterate this fast.

Do I recommend this for everyone? No. I have 20 years of SEO, design, and technical experience behind me. But if you are an operator willing to do the actual work, the leverage is right there.