Small Playgrounds for Backyards: The Care-Bear Castle

Looking for a small playground for backyards? Needing a lot of fun but short on space? The Care-Bear Castle is a great compact playground with many great features. Let’s check it out!

Space Saving Fun

The Care-Bear Castle is a space-saving playset thanks to the 2-position cross beam. This allows us to dangle a swing on each side of the swing set tower. This saves so much space as our traditional swing beam sticks out about 12’ from the side of the tower while the 2-position only sticks out 3’ on each side.

Two belt swings are included with the Care-Bear Castle. If you want to swap one of those swings out for, say, a glider or tire swing, you certainly can. While the swing beams are strong enough to handle an adult, if an adult uses the swings, you will see flexing and swaying. This is normal.

The Care-Bear Castle has a rock wall/ladder combo as its access point. This combo saves a lot of space as it combines two items into one. If you want an easier climber, you can swap the rock wall/ladder combo for a staircase or ramp though both of those options will take up more space.

What is a swing set without a slide? The Care-Bear Castle has a 10’ waterfall slide in front of the tower. This slide is the tried and true slide, but if you want a bit more heavy-duty version, you could upgrade to an avalanche slide.

Fun accessories help round out the 4’x4’ tower. Included are the ship’s wheel, telescope, and tic-tac-toe. You can view the product page here!

Customizing the Care-Bear

What are some common customizations for the Care-Bear Castle?

Pictured below is a custom Care-Bear Castle.  They added a built-in picnic table with decking to make a cute little snack area under the tower. Wanting a bit more space, they changed the 4’x4′ tower into a 4’x6′ tower and covered the whole tower with the roof. It sure turned out cute!

Another common change that helps reduce the size of the Care-Bear Castle is to change the waterfall slide to a super spiral slide. To do this, we must increase the size of the tower to avoid having either the slide empty directly into the path of the swings or having the turn of the slide stick out into the swing’s path. We must use a 4’x6’ or larger tower to do this.

For example, we will change the tower to a 4’x6’ tower and offset the super spiral slide enough so that the turn doesn’t interfere and the exit is far enough away from the other swing. Now, the set would be 12’ left to right and 12’ front to back. While not a huge change, every foot counts when trying to design a space-saving playset!

Adding a ball pit under the tower would add a lot of fun without changing the dimensions of the playset. If ball pits are not your thing, you could install a lemonade stand, coffee bar, or picnic table. Or you could also enclose the entire bottom to have a small clubhouse! However, if you are thinking of doing a clubhouse, check out the Lodge Playhouse. It is similar to the Care Bear Castle but has a playhouse on top. 

The Care-Bear Castle is a great compact playground! If you have any questions about this or any of our other swing sets, please get in touch with our swing set design team!