South Portland Gardens, ME Indoor Activities

Cavorters of all ages caper about Joker's Family Fun and Games's massive indoor play zone, which is stocked with games and attractions that inspire climbing and sliding. Kids can scramble into the three-tiered A-Maze-Zing playhouse to navigate tubes, web bridges, and conference rooms, and toddlers can maneuver through the mini maze or hop aboard the train ride for a sightseeing jaunt around the tracks. Future adults can challenge one another in sundry classic arcade games such as skee-ball and air hockey, and more than 50 video games await thumbs desperate to win garlands of exchangeable tickets. Whippersnappers achieve liftoff in lieu of jetpack overalls on a Jolly Jump air bounce then safely glide down a 22-foot inflatable super slide. At the 14,000-square-foot Portland location, youngsters can also blast comrades in a space-age laser-tag zone, scale a towering rock-climbing wall, and master putting skills on an 18-hole mini-golf course. After extreme bouts of frolicking, families can quell tummy rumbles with slices of housemade pizza slathered in Joker's signature sauce or peek at the menu to peruse sandwiches, burgers, and chicken tenders.

Diets, traditional medicine, and exercise regimens all work best when people keep one thing in mind: Everyone’s body is different. Vitality Pilates's instructors, many of whom boast more than a decade of experience, understand this basic truth, tailoring their teachings to individual bodies. They blend both traditional Pilates practice with newer teaching styles in introductory classes, private lessons, and multilevel training classes that may integrate apparatus and prop work. To accommodate those who want to dive into Pilates more extensively, they offer an instructor-training course and a rare copy of Joseph Pilates's high-school diary.

Studio 59 Pilates Fitness’s owner Stacy Darkis has dedicated her life to helping others. She began her career as a clinical medical assistant, but changed course after discovering Pilates and realizing how many more people she’d be able to help by opening her own studio. Today, she helps her students control their muscles and sharpen their bodily awareness in both mat Pilates classes and on Pilates reformers, moving equipment that uses springs to add tension and thus enhance the effectiveness of moves. Her supporting staff of instructors helps fill a robust schedule that also features yoga classes.

The instructors of Greener Postures Yoga welcome practitioners of all ability levels, leading through Vinyasa yoga that treats breath as students’ guide through dynamic poses. Greener Postures Yoga has also recently opened a new location in West Falmouth which allows them to offer a new range of classes including kids yoga, prenatal yoga, deep stretch yoga, and restorative yoga. Both expansive studios are heated to 95–100 degrees and retain their humidity, which enhances Vinyasa’s heat-generating flows and encourages detoxification through sweat and increased circulation.

When registered yoga teacher Carissa Ciuca discovered the ancient art, she was searching for a physical activity that would free her from the restraints of her daily routine. She found that the mental and spiritual breakthroughs it inspired were what truly liberated her and helped to center her life. After training under Seane Corn—an internationally celebrated yoga teacher—among others, she realized her dream of opening her own yoga studio, then closing it once in a while so she could go home and sleep. Now, Carissa and her large, highly trained team of registered instructors strive to create a sanctuary where students of all abilities can achieve individual growth, celebrate community, and foster self-awareness.

The staff helps students unite mind, body, and spirit through the flows and postures of Vinyasa, gentle yin, and postnatal classes. They created this curriculum to help students let yoga’s lessons stir change in their current lives and not in their past, for which time travel yoga is notorious. When they are not immersed in their own practice, these motivating instructors empower students to reshape their lives with a comprehensive teacher certification program, which emphasizes the Vinyasa style.

A mural of a radiant sun painted in oranges, reds, and yellows covers one of the walls at Portland Power Yoga, mimicking the warmth of the heated room where yoga instructors show ranks of students the proper way to extend their arms as they crouch on their mats. The heat helps facilitate deeper stretching and detoxification as students flow through sequences in 90-minute Basics, All Levels, or Intermediate classes. Instructors condense the same experience into a shorter session during Hour of Power classes and help groups hold extended poses in Yin Yoga, awakening students' connective tissues and convincing nearby deer that they’re actually statues. In addition to regular classes, the studio hosts community workshops with guest instructors and often works in tandem with the bodywork experts at Hara Holistic Health.