Trampoline Park Design: Why the Court Is One Line in the Box

Świdnica, a city in western Poland, will get a 1,200 sq m (12,917 sq ft) Jump 4U park before the end of 2026. The franchise chain’s seventh site is listed with trampolines, climbing walls, an obstacle course and interactive attractions, plus a café and a party room. The floor area comes from the Polish trade title Parkmag, cited by Amusements and Attractions on 27 October.

Eight days earlier, Oxygen Activeplay opened a 22,000 sq ft (2,044 sq m) park at Crawley Leisure Park in West Sussex. It lists more than 40 trampolines, a giant airbag, an interactive sports pitch, Strike Zone, an I-Wall, a Pixel Floor, toddler soft play and two mega slides.

And on 15 October, Slick City opened its 50th park, in Milford, Massachusetts. It has 13 slides and no trampoline court at all.

Three boxes, three countries, twenty days. Taken one at a time, each is an opening notice. Taken together, they describe something that matters more to a buyer than any single launch: the trampoline court has stopped being the thing a new indoor park is built around. It is now one line among six, seven or eight.

What follows is a reading of seven published openings between 12 and 27 October 2026, each dated and sourced, plus the arithmetic that turns them into a specification decision. It is not a market sizing exercise. Nobody publishes capex by attraction category, so where the numbers stop, this article says so.

---

1. Seven openings, twenty days, four countries

The register below covers the indoor openings and category additions that the active-play trade feed reported between 12 and 27 October 2026 and that named their attractions. Three are in the United States, two in Poland, one in the United Kingdom and one in Belgium. One German project from the same window, JumpYard’s 4,000 sq m conversion of a Frankfurt cinema, is excluded here because its construction schedule was covered in a separate analysis.

Three entries are worth flagging before the table. Zajawka, which opened on 26 October at OTO Park in Siemianowice Śląskie, is the first site of a new Polish brand and sits inside a retail park; Eurobuild reports that the scheme was developed by Falcon Investment Management and Acteeum Central Europe, so the operator is a tenant rather than the developer. Cloud Quest opened in Colorado Springs in a venue that formerly housed an Urban Air park. And the Clip ‘n Climb job in Belgium was not a new building at all: four Climbing Challenges, six climbing lines in total, went into De Speelplaneet, an existing playground with inflatables, soft play and an arcade in Mouscron.

The three published floor areas span 1,200 to 2,880 sq m, a factor of 2.4. The unpublished ones are a gap in the public record, not a sign of a small box: Slick City has said nothing about per-park area in its milestone announcement, and neither Cloud Quest nor Zajawka has released plans. Estimating them from photographs would be guesswork dressed as data.

---

2. Count the categories, not the trampolines

The counting rule matters, because it decides whether the pattern is real. An attraction counts here only if it occupies its own footprint, needs its own structure or its own power, and can be sold or closed as a unit. A feature inside the court, such as a dunk hoop over a trampoline, does not count. A separate ninja rig does.

Under that rule, Urban Air Kennewick lists five categories, Cloud Quest six, Oxygen eight, Slick City one, Jump 4U four, Zajawka seven, and the Mouscron venue four once the climbing install is included. Six of the seven boxes list four or more. Five of the seven name the trampoline court as one of them.

Seven boxes is a small sample. It is large enough to disprove the simplest version of the old rule, which was that a new indoor park is a court plus a party room plus a café. Not one box in the register fits that description. The closest is the 1,200 sq m one, and it still lists four categories, which suggests the constraint there is floor area rather than strategy.

The other reading of the same table concerns what a supplier is asked to deliver. In a four-category box, no single supplier owns the venue. The order splits across a court vendor, a climbing vendor, an obstacle vendor and an interactive vendor, and the operator carries the interfaces: who owns the steel, who signs off the anchor, whose warranty covers the joint. That is a procurement problem before it is a design problem, and it is the reason the bay schedule in section 7 exists.

---

3. The format growing fastest sells no jumps

Slick City’s own milestone statement, reported on 15 October, gives a set of numbers that no court-led chain in this register matches. The brand debuted in 2022. Milford is its 50th park and its 25th opening of 2026, which puts the four-year average at 12.5 parks a year and this year’s pace at about two a month.

The pipeline figure is the interesting one. As of September 2026 the company claimed 173 locations signed or open worldwide. Against 50 open, that leaves 123 committed but not yet trading, a pipeline 2.5 times the size of the operating fleet. It also claims more than 6 million guest visits since 2022, with more than 45 percent of them in the last twelve months.

Run the arithmetic on that last claim. Forty-five percent of 6 million is 2.7 million visits in twelve months. Spread across 50 parks, that is at least 54,000 visits per park. The phrase is “at least” for a reason: half of those parks opened during the year, so the true figure per park-year is higher, and for the 2022 cohort it is a multiple of that. The number is company-stated and unaudited, and it remains the most useful order-of-magnitude check available from outside.

Parks per year    = 50 parks / 4 years = 12.5
2026 pace         = 25 openings / 12 months = 2.1 a month
Pipeline ratio    = 173 signed or open / 50 open = 3.46
Visits, 12 months = 6,000,000 x 0.45 = 2,700,000
Per park, floor   = 2,700,000 / 50 = 54,000 visits

What this proves: a format with zero trampoline courts can scale units faster than any court-led chain in the same trade feed. What it does not prove: that courts are shrinking. Urban Air opened a 31,000 sq ft court-led box in the same fortnight, and Oxygen put 40-plus beds into Crawley. The court is not disappearing. It is being outnumbered as a share of new capacity.

The distinction that matters for a buyer: a court is a fixed asset with one revenue line. A mixed box is a set of bays that can be re-let to a different attraction when one stops earning. The second costs more per square meter to build and less to keep relevant.

---

4. One site, two operators, six categories

Cloud Quest opened on 12 October in Colorado Springs in a venue that formerly housed an Urban Air park. That single sentence is the cleanest evidence in the register that the shell outlives the brand.

The new operator lists six categories: trampolines, a ninja course, sports courts, climbing walls, go-karts and laser tag, plus private party rooms and catering. Pricing runs on a tiered system with an ultimate day pass at $24.99, described by the operator as discounted while the venue establishes itself, and monthly subscriptions that cover all current and planned attractions. Published hours in the trade report cover Friday from 4pm to 10pm, Saturday from 10am to 10pm and Sunday from 11am to 9pm.

Two things in that list deserve more attention than the price. The first is the subscription wording: unlimited access to all current and planned attractions. A subscription sold against attractions that do not exist yet is a capex commitment disguised as a marketing offer. Whoever signs that promise has to keep adding categories, because the renewal depends on it.

The second is what transferred between the operators. Not the rides, which changed, and not the brand. What transferred was the building: the clear height, the slab, the power distribution, the egress capacity and the parking field. Every one of those is a constraint the new tenant inherited and cannot change. Had the previous operator sized the electrical service for a court and a party room only, Cloud Quest would not be running go-karts and laser tag in it now.

That is the whole argument for designing bays rather than zones. A zone is named after the attraction that occupies it. A bay is defined by what it can accept: footprint, clear height, floor loading, anchor capacity, power, and a path to the exit.

---

5. The price test: a six-category day against a 90-minute session

Price is where a format claim either holds or collapses. Cloud Quest charges $24.99 for a day pass across six categories. Sky Zone’s Bismarck park published $20 for 60 minutes, $24 for 90 minutes, $29 for two hours and $33 for three hours, on a menu captured on 2 November 2026 for our analysis of session-length pricing.

Put those side by side and the mixed box prices a full day of six attractions at roughly the list price of a 90-minute court session in a mid-size US city. The comparison is not clean: different markets, different dates, one of them explicitly discounting to build a base, and Bismarck is a list menu rather than an average transaction. The direction survives the caveats. If six categories clear the market at the price of one, then per-category revenue in a mixed box is thin, and the box has to earn on volume, dwell time and secondary spend rather than on ticket price.

For an equipment buyer this changes what “good” looks like. In a court-led park, the biggest cheque buys the most beds, because beds are the revenue unit. In a mixed box, the biggest cheque buys the bay, and the attraction inside it is chosen partly on how little it costs to run. The marginal category has to be cheap to build, cheap to staff and quick to swap.

That is consistent with what the register shows. The categories being added in October are mostly low-labor: a climbing wall with six lines, an obstacle course, an interactive floor, a light-up floor game, a slide. None of them needs a dedicated attendant in the way a court with a supervision ratio does, and none occupies the floor area per guest that a court does.

---

6. Europe runs the same mix in a smaller box

Jump 4U’s seventh site is the number to hold on to: 1,200 sq m, four categories, a café and a party room. Oxygen’s Crawley park has 70 percent more floor area at 2,044 sq m and carries seven built attractions beyond the court plus 40-odd beds. Urban Air’s Kennewick box is 2,880 sq m, which is 2.4 times the Polish site.

The bed density in the UK box gives a usable benchmark. Take the 2,044 sq m and divide by the 40-plus beds: no more than 51 sq m of floor per bed, because the bed count is stated as a minimum. Apply that density to a 1,200 sq m box and you get about 23 beds if the entire floor were court, which it is plainly not.

Area per bed (UK box) = 2,044 sq m / 40 beds = 51.1 sq m per bed
Beds at that density  = 1,200 sq m / 51.1 = 23 beds, court only
Court area needed     = beds x area per bed
Categories that fit   = (usable area after circulation) / area per category

The second formula is deliberately incomplete. Area per category depends on the attraction: a climbing wall with six lines is a wall and a landing zone, an obstacle course is a run, an interactive floor is a rectangle with a projector position above it. We are not going to publish a table of category footprints, because the honest answer is that they vary with the product and the market, and a table of invented numbers is worse than no table.

What the arithmetic does establish is the trade a small box makes. At 1,200 sq m with four categories and a café, the court cannot be the majority of the floor. The Polish franchise has made the opposite choice from the US chains in this register, and it made it at the seventh site rather than the first, which suggests the format works at that size rather than being a one-off experiment.

Clip ‘n Climb’s Belgian job is the same logic from the supplier side: four climbing challenges and six lines pushed into a playground that already had inflatables, soft play and an arcade. Nobody knocked down a wall. The category was sold into an existing footprint, which is only possible if the footprint had height and a landing zone nobody else was using.

---

7. What this does to your equipment specification

If the box is going to hold several categories, and possibly different ones in five years, then the specification has to be written for the bays before it is written for the attractions. Five items decide whether a bay can be re-let. None of them can be added later at reasonable cost.

7.1 Clear height, measured to the obstruction rather than the slab

What it is The distance from finished floor to the lowest thing above it: duct, sprinkler branch line, light fitting, structure. Not the slab soffit.

What it decides Which categories can occupy the bay. A climbing wall wants vertical run. A ninja rig wants a truss line. A slide wants drop. A court wants clearance above the beds. Our guide to ceiling height treats this as the first number to check, and it is usually fixed by the lease before design starts.

What to verify Ask for a reflected ceiling plan with the low points marked, then measure three bays yourself. Operators routinely find a sprinkler main well below the soffit after signing.

7.2 Load path and anchor capacity

What it is Where the weight and the pull go: slab on grade, suspended slab, or structural steel. Ceiling-hung elements put load into structure, not into the floor.

What it decides Whether a wall, a truss or a hanging element is possible at all, and whether a structural review is needed before concept design. Getting this wrong is the most expensive mistake on the list, because the fix is steel.

What to verify A structural engineer’s written note on allowable point loads and anchorage, specific to the bay, before the equipment layout is frozen. Standards set the test and inspection regime for the installed equipment, not the building’s capacity; those are separate questions with separate sign-offs.

7.3 Power and data to the bay edges, not to the plant room

What it is Distribution sized for the categories you might add, with spare ways at the perimeter of each bay.

What it decides Whether an interactive floor, a projection unit or a lighting feature can be added without chasing walls. Retrofitting a circuit across a finished park means closing the area it crosses.

What to verify Spare capacity at the panel and spare containment to each bay, in writing, at handover.

7.4 Egress that survives a category change

What it is Exit width and travel distance calculated from the occupant load the space is approved for, not from the equipment list.

What it decides How many guests the box can hold, and therefore which categories pay. Our work on occupant load shows how far the same floor area can move depending on which use the code assigns it.

What to verify The approved occupant load in the permit documents, and the egress width that supports it. A category change that raises the load can invalidate the approval.

7.5 A bay schedule, priced as a schedule

What it is A one-page table listing each bay, its dimensions, clear height, floor loading, power and the categories it can host.

What it decides Whether the second category becomes a purchase order or a construction project. In our experience the difference is decided on this page, not in the showroom.

What to verify That the schedule is signed by the operator and the equipment supplier together, and that it names who owns each interface. See how we document certification scope for the paper trail that should sit behind it.

The equipment consequence is not subtle. A supplier asked to quote a court in a six-category box is quoting one line of six, and the interface risk sits with whoever signs the bay schedule. Ask for the schedule first. If a supplier cannot work to one, that tells you something about how the installation will go.

---

8. What would prove this wrong

This reading rests on seven openings in twenty days, three of which published a floor area. That is enough to raise a hypothesis, not enough to settle one. Four things would settle it against the argument, and each can be checked.

The court case would win if the next twenty verifiable US openings put 70 percent or more of their floor into courts. October would then have been a month of mixed boxes rather than a shift, and the court would remain the organizing element of a new build. For the argument above to hold, the register would have to be an outlier rather than a sample.

A price premium of 40 percent or more would undercut the read. Cloud Quest at $24.99 against $24 for 90 minutes is close to parity, and the operator calls its own pricing discounted. If mixed boxes settle at $35 or more for a day while court sessions hold at $24, then six categories are a revenue strategy layered on top of court capacity rather than a replacement for it.

A weak conversion rate on the Slick City pipeline would do the same. A signed pipeline is a franchise sales figure until the parks trade. If a large share of those 123 sites never opens, or if they convert at less than half the rate of court-led chains, the format’s unit growth is a paper number and the comparison in section 3 falls apart.

Cheap real estate would explain it just as well. If court-led openings stall only where retail rents have fallen, the driver is property rather than format. The test is a market where rents are flat or rising and a mixed box still wins the lease. Should mixed boxes only win in distressed locations, the argument is about landlords, not about what guests pay for.

What remains unknown is not a small gap. No operator in this register publishes capex by attraction category, so the claim that a mixed box costs more per square meter is an inference from the number of systems involved, not a measured figure. None publishes attendance per category, so the per-category revenue argument in section 5 rests on published ticket prices only. Floor areas for Cloud Quest, Zajawka and Slick City are not public, which is why the size comparison in section 6 uses three boxes rather than seven.

---

9. Before you sign

Three actions, in order, for anyone planning a box for 2027.

Write the bay schedule before the equipment list. Decide how many bays, how big, how high and how powered. Then choose what goes in them. Doing it the other way round produces a park that cannot change without demolition.

Buy the height and the power you cannot retrofit. Clear height, service capacity and egress width are the three items that never get cheaper after the lease is signed. Everything else can be added in a closure window.

Price the second category into the first contract. Ask what a climbing wall, an obstacle run or an interactive floor would cost to add in year three, and get the interface responsibilities named now. A supplier who quotes only the court leaves you to manage four vendors later.

If you are weighing a court-led box against a mixed one, the useful next step is a layout at your actual dimensions rather than a catalog. Send the floor area, the clear height and the budget range, and we will return a bay schedule with two configurations: one court-led, one mixed. See how the design and quote process runs, or start with our count of attraction density across five 2026 parks.

Get a free design and quote →

---

FAQ

How much floor area does each attraction need in a trampoline park?

There is no single figure, and a supplier who gives you one without asking about your product range is guessing. What you can fix is the order of operations: circulation and back of house come off the top, then the bays are sized by clear height and load path, then attractions are assigned. A climbing wall with six lines, an obstacle run and an interactive floor consume very different shapes, and the shape is usually the binding constraint rather than the area.

Is a trampoline court still worth building in 2026?

Yes, under two conditions. The court has to be sized to the trade area rather than to the building, and the box has to be able to add a second category without structural work. Oxygen put more than 40 beds into a 22,000 sq ft park in October, and Urban Air opened a 31,000 sq ft court-led box in the same fortnight. The court did not stop working. It stopped being sufficient on its own.

What ceiling height should a multi-attraction box plan for?

Plan per bay rather than per building, and measure to the lowest obstruction rather than the slab. Height requirements differ by attraction and by the standard that applies in your market, and the applicable document depends on jurisdiction: ASTM F2970 covers commercial trampoline courts in the United States, ASTM F1918 covers soft contained play, and EN ISO 23659 covers trampoline parks in the European system. We do not publish millimeter thresholds, because they differ by edition and by market, and a wrong number is worse than a referral to the standard.

Can you add a climbing wall to an existing trampoline park?

Usually, if three things check out: the wall can find a load path, there is a landing zone that does not cross a main circulation route, and the added occupant load does not break the approved egress. Clip ‘n Climb’s Mouscron installation is the pattern to copy, four challenges and six lines inside a venue that already had inflatables and soft play. The work is in the survey, not in the wall.

How do I compare an all-day pass with a session ticket?

Convert both to revenue per guest-hour and per category. A $24.99 all-day pass across six categories is roughly $4.17 per category for a day, against $24 for 90 minutes of one category at Sky Zone Bismarck. The all-day pass looks cheap per category and expensive per hour if guests stay four hours. What the operator earns back is secondary spend, which is why the café and the party room appear in almost every box in the register.

---

Sources

1. Amusements and Attractions, “Urban Air expands with new Washington park”, 12 October 2026. amusementsandattractions.com
2. Amusements and Attractions, “Cloud Quest Adventure Park opens in Colorado Springs”, 12 October 2026. amusementsandattractions.com
3. Amusements and Attractions, “Slick City open milestone slide park”, 15 October 2026. amusementsandattractions.com
4. Amusements and Attractions, “Oxygen Activeplay opens latest indoor activity park”, 19 October 2026. amusementsandattractions.com
5. Oxygen Activeplay, Crawley park page, accessed 3 November 2026. oxygenactiveplay.co.uk
6. Amusements and Attractions, “Clip ‘n Climb installs climbing challenge at Belgian entertainment centre”, 22 October 2026. amusementsandattractions.com
7. Amusements and Attractions, “Polish retail park adds Zajawka indoor play centre”, 26 October 2026. amusementsandattractions.com
8. Amusements and Attractions, “Polish trampoline park to open seventh location”, 27 October 2026, citing Parkmag. amusementsandattractions.com
9. Slick City Action Park, company profile page, accessed 3 November 2026. slickcity.com
10. Sky Zone Bismarck, ticket menu, captured 2 November 2026. skyzone.com