Important Announcement

It is with a heavy heart we need to inform you as of March 19th our facility will no longer be operating at 4465 Drummond Rd. in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

We will be moving and restructuring our current business model focusing more on private birthday parties and occasional drop-in play in a smaller facility. We will be announcing our new location in the coming weeks once all is finalized.

We’ve enjoyed getting to know each and every one of you. It has been an honor to chat with all of you and watching your littles grow.
Opening a playground was a 7-8 year project in the works. With multiple business plans and ideas. The one thing we did not anticipate was a worldwide pandemic with a recession. We had many twists and turns along the way that were very unexpected yet still pushed through.
The big question most of you likely have is WHY, WHY NOW?
There are many reasons for this and some we are not able to speak of, but the big one is the cost of operations in this particular facility, it was nearing around $24,000 a month for basic things like rent, insurance, hydro and gas. This does not include other items such as food for the snack bar and wages. It is simply too high for a business like ours to survive in a space like this, especially after being locked down for the full term of the pandemic. As most of you know, our facility only opened Nov.16,2019 then closed March 2020 from covid. Like most small businesses, we accumulated a great deal of covid debts (enough debt to open 2-3 locations) and did not qualify for all grants provided due to only being opened for a short time. With those debts combined with our high cost of operations it is simply not possible for the business to survive in this location. Yes, we are very busy during the weekends in the Winter months, but weekdays are slow. Come the Summer season, our facility also slows down because most are enjoying outdoor activities. We hoped and did try very hard to come up with a reasonable solution with our landlord but unfortunately, we were unsuccessful. It has been a very challenging time mentally as we truly wanted to find a solution so we could stay in the facility and provide your family with an Indoor Playground for your child/children. The reason we are announcing now, just a couple days away from the closing date is simply because we only just knew the true result today. Everything was still very much up in the air for negotiations, and we truly did not know what our true outcome was going to be until now. We really did not know how soon we would have to vacate the facility and hoped we could stay longer, but that again is higher costs that we simply can not keep accumulating.

For those of you who have an upcoming party booked, we are truly very sorry. The last thing we wanted was to upset anyone and disappoint your child but this is out of our control. We have sent all of you an email and do plan to refund your party deposits as our new location will be a bit of time before we can open. Refunds for this will be issued shortly.

For those of you who have a Little Stomper pass, we have not forgotten about you.

The Little Stomper Pass is good for 1year from purchase, after that 1yr passes from date of purchase it is expired.

Anyone who has a card that has NOT expired by March 19th, 2023 will be refunded based on how many sessions were left on your card. (Example: 3yrs+ Little Stomper pass was $89.97 after tax, but you only used 4 sessions so far, We will refund you $44.96). This is all dependant on how many stamps were left on your card. There will also be the option to keep hold of your card until we open our new location and we will allow you to use it there extending the expiry date a bit of course.
For those of you who have booked a play session in advanced later than March 19th, a refund will be issued shortly.

Will we still be called “Jurassic Joe’s Indoor Playground”?
Yes. We will be still operating under this name.
Will we still have the same play structure?

Sadly, due to us having to downsize we will not have the 3 level play structure. Having a structure, the size of our current one means us needing to lease a very large space. This is something we simply can not afford due to increase of costs on everything.

We will have all our dinosaurs, along with our dino toddler structure. We are also working on adding an archeological dig area, dino skeleton climbing wall and possibly a second dino themed structure. This will accommodate children ages 1yr-5yrs. This is all still in the works and could be altered depending on things. But they are thoughts we’ve had regarding the move/downsize. Once we have everything figured out we will be sure to keep you all posted on our Facebook page. One thing we realized is although we did our best to make this space work with our dinosaurs it never truly felt like our space because we did not design the original layout. This will now be our opportunity to make the new location more uniquely ours and what we’ve envisioned for Jurassic Joe’s.
What is occasional play sessions?
Our facility will only be offering play sessions a couple times a week for specified times. (An example of this would be Mondays and Wednesdays 10am-2pm). Families will have to fill out their online waivers and book ahead of time just like we currently do at this location, but we will only be able to have around 30-50 people in the facility at a time. Once those spots are filled, we will not be able to add anymore due to fire and safety.
Our new location we will be offering 1 party on Fridays, 3 parties a day Saturdays and Sundays. All completely private for just the party host and their guests. If party spots are not taken, we will then make an announcement on our Facebook page so you may book in a play session.
This is not goodbye it is we hope to see you soon 😊