Things to Do in Comstock Park

Hockey pucks clack from stick to stick and soccer balls soar past goalkeepers inside Cedar Rock Skating Academy, where athletes are welcome to showcase competition spirits year-round. A full-size hockey rink—outfitted with NHL–style dasher boards and glass—hosts games throughout the year, including youth leagues and 40-and-over leagues. During summer months, inline hockey pits wheeled warriors against each other, and during winter, soccer players can show off fancy footwork on the academy’s indoor field.

In addition to its game spaces, the facility also boasts eight locker rooms, a concession stand, and a pro shop, as well as full-length bleachers, which seat spectators and scouts hoping to discover the next star zamboni operator.

Internationally trained and Pilates Method Alliance–certified instructor Ahmé Bovée channels more than 15 years of experience as a fitness instructor into her core-strengthening workouts. After ending her five-year career as the host of Canada's popular Pilates in Guelph television series in 2007, she founded her open, sun-kissed studio. At Pilates in East, she helps students of all ages and abilities boost flexibility and endurance with resistance bands, weights, and reformer machines during group Pilates classes and private training sessions. This busy instructor deftly divides her time between these Pilates classes. She hosts teacher training certification programs and—like that dollar bill with the online tracking URL—travels the country to present at Pilates on Tour conferences.

After slinging itself onto the Michigan art scene in 1996, The Mud Room has since spun into a hub of creativity for artists of all ages and artistic experience. Under the direction of the studio's in-house teachers, small groups learn to wield everything from paintbrushes to pottery wheels during four types of classes, which teach such skills as fusing colored glass tiles into kaleidoscopic works or hand-forming ceramics to recreate ancient casseroles. Customers can also stop in to paint pre-made ceramics themselves. The pieces come in various shapes and sizes, which patrons can adorn with colored glaze before handing their artwork over to the professionals to be fired and finished. The studio also offers group pottery classes for parties including girls' nights out, birthdays, and kids' celebrations. In keeping with its safety-first approach, The Mud Room features only nontoxic, lead-free products, ensuring the finished pieces are safe to use with food.

Inside Moves' sprawling indoor-climbing facility invites mountaineers of all skill levels to scale its many craggy walls, nooks, and ledges. Instructors are always on hand for safety tutorials, as well as lessons in top-rope, lead, and boulder-style climbing. Unharnessed climbers can also pilot the facility's low overhangs, which have variable hand grips to mimic a real rockface and black rubber padding to catch you when the mountain decides to "just be friends."

Marksmen with CO2-powered guns volley paintballs back and forth at T.C. Paintball’s four Michigan locations. Indoor and outdoor battlefields beckon players with a number of obstacles to duck under, dive between, or readjust for ultimate feng shui. Referees patrol the color-strewn grounds, where guests celebrate birthdays and special events with games of capture the flag and el presidente. The experienced staff at each of T.C. Paintball's well-stocked pro shops offer sharpshooting tips gleaned from years of chromatic combat, and can replenish paintball supplies that run low.

In Gymboree Play & Music's most popular class, Play & Learn, tots master skills such as cause and effect, problem solving, and good communication through games and play. The notion that learning should be fun for the under-five set permeates all of Gymboree's classes. From music and art to sports activities, most classes are calibrated for development at six-month age intervals. Mixed-age classes teach cooperation, as kids play movement games or perform songs on musical instruments. Older children take the school-skills class to learn skills that will help them in school and during conference calls with the president. All of this takes place in a well-padded indoor playground with tunnels, slides, and bridges designed by nationally renowned playground designer Jay Beckwith to withstand tiny bare feet and the wrath of resident trolls.