Things to Do in Brunswick

Winner of ParentsConnect's award for Cleveland's Best Indoor Playspace in 2009, Amazone Family Entertainment Center sets the stage for jungle-themed parties and open play sessions. Its three-story playground surrounds kids and parents in slides, bridges, and plastic trees, all accented by faux foliage that simulates the gorilla-run play centers of the Amazon. Elsewhere, the glowing eyes of temple creatures peer down at players within a black-lit laser-tag arena. An orchestra of laughter and electronic beeps emerge from within the arcade, which hosts 50 games, including air hockey, skee ball, and racing. To fuel playtime, Amazone's team slings pizza at a snack bar and hosts celebrations within five themed birthday-party rooms. The facility also caters to parents with comfy couches and free WiFi that lets them stream their favorite cartoons.

Hearing a cacophony of three-shots burst into the air but unable to see where it's coming from, a player decides to force his foes to reveal their positions by waiting patiently in the roots of an uprooted tree. Such natural cover lies throughout the backwoods field at Valley City Paintball, where combatants traverse terrain from wooded hills to a creek bed to stacks of fallen timber. The referees maintain safe conditions for all levels of players, showing guests a safety video and leading a field briefing before supervising games such as Defend the Tree and two-team Card Collector with re-spawn. Overseen by veteran Brian Gunkelman––who served four years in the 82nd Airborne and currently continues service through the Ohio Air National Guard––Valley City's team members allow up to 28 players on the field at a time. They also encourage visitors to take advantage of the natural cover, whether by wearing ghillie suits or painting a watercolor still life during the thick of battle.

Synergy Paintball aims to be a way of giving back to the community by offering a safe place to have fun and expend pent-up energy. As if in agreement, youthful shouts ring out from across the arena's 35 acres, punctuated by the whispery noise of paintballs cutting through the fresh air. The style of play varies across multiple playing fields, which serve as venues for games of capture the flag and speedball. In the jungle area, camouflaged warriors crouch and tumble between towering trees and shimmy among tufts of low brush. Snipers stash themselves atop mounds of dirt or in the beds of dump trucks in another field.

The park has also played host to United States military reserves tactical training, an exercise that filled the park with humvees and transport vehicles before the beginning of a mock Medevac evacuation.

Happy shouts float across Swings-N-Things Family Fun Park, whipping out of the mouths of drivers racing around go-kart tracks and captains ricocheting off one another in bumper boats. The satisfying clunk of colorful spheres falling into holes on the mini-golf course perks up ears in the sprawling complex of indoor and outdoor attractions. Go-kart drivers whiten their knuckles behind the wheel of 9-horsepower Honda engines, tearing through a quarter mile of twists and turns on the Grand Prix track as if it were a high-school principal’s lawn. Alternatively, patrons frolic across the park’s two outdoor mini-golf courses before practicing their aim in a laser shootout game, and children ages 10 and younger scramble their socked feet over slides and rides inside the Kids Korner indoor play area. Swings-N-Things Family Fun Park is easily accessible from the area's major highways.