Tempe Indoor Activities

The myriad classes, activities, and programs at Great Play operate with one focus in mind: to spark kids’ passion for physical activity. At Great Play’s core lies an interactive arena, which Arizona Foothills magazine awarded Best Kid's Entertainment Indoors and Best Birthday Party Spot for Kids, designed to facilitate physical fun. Projector screens spotlight the arena's walls while sensors and a directional sound system inject interactivity into the slew of noncompetitive games and activities that help boost kids' motor and athletic skills. Monitoring the arena's playing field and adhering to the SCORE training method is an upbeat staff that teaches youngsters how to swing a baseball bat, bribe slam-dunk-competition judges, and trap a soccer ball by breaking each skill into a series of positively reinforced smaller steps. The staff also tailors birthday parties to birthday kids’ likings and hosts Parents Night Out events that allow caregivers to drop off their children and hit the town while kids play in the gym, feast on pizza, and catch a G-rated flick on a 100-square-foot screen.

Named as a top indoor place for kids in Arizona by AZCentral.com, BounceU in Gilbert surrounds sock-clad kids with an arena of giant, colorful inflatables. Within the supervised fun house, young ones get their cardio up by navigating air-filled obstacle courses and slipping down plush slides. On the gigantic Spider Mountain, climbers hone the skills needed to one day scale the greatest inflatable of them all, Mount Everest. The vertical climbing wall challenges children's skills, and a foam-ball shooting range and 20-foot slide provide extra enjoyment. A private party room also makes the springy stadium an ideal venue for birthday parties, field trips, and fundraisers.

As toes twinkle onstage, visitors can bask in the renovated scenery of Symphony Hall, which couples hand-blown glass chandeliers with a quartet of designer tapestries. One of the largest machine-made draperies known to man, the theater’s colorful Grand Drape symbolizes the renewal of generations, creativity, and library books discovered during fossil digs.

Within Bikram Yoga Tempe’s sprawling 3,800-square-foot facility, UV-sanitized steam curls around the outstretched hands of yogis bent in muscle-strengthening postures. Owners Elaina and Dr. Benjamin Zorensky,ND spent two years perfecting this scene, bringing in waterproof and bacteria-resistant Flotex flooring and antimicrobial ductwork in order to best pay homage to the practice that they love so much. Their attention to detail seems to have paid off–Bikram Yoga Tempe celebrated 10 years in business in 2012, and their classes are going strong.

When Elaina took her first yoga class, chronic neck pain and TMJ were both part of her life. After three weeks of Bikram, the pain disappeared. From then on, she was determined to spread the healing benefits of Bikram to others, including Ben, who was a hardcore athlete with serious inflexibility. Once he felt the affects of Bikram on his own tight hamstrings, he found himself persuaded as well. Together, they opened Bikram Yoga Tempe in 2002 and surrounded themselves with seasoned instructors who now kick-start their own students’ superheated journeys during 42 classes per week.

At Sea Life Arizona Aquarium, you can watch Ziva, a rescued green sea turtle, graciously share the limelight with the 5,000 other oceanic creatures that populate the aquarium's tanks, including white-tip reef sharks and cownose stingrays. Rays swarm in live feeding shows, sea stars wait in tanks to be touched, and crabs don't mind of you hold them in your hand or whisper sweet nothings in their ears.