I went to Get Air Portland to try out the new trampoline park, and don’t worry, I got some photos and a video for you to see it for yourself. First the photos, then I’ll tell you all about it:

You're required to buy these. They're $2. I'll sell you mine for $4.







This is harder to do than you might think.

Slack line!

Basketball.

You can launch yourself into foam pits.

Dodgeball.

When my friend and I arrived at 3 p.m. Monday (Columbus Day) the line was out the door and a crowd was in the lobby. It took us 40 minutes to get to the front of the line. We each signed a waiver that four times told us that jumping on a trampoline is likely to kill or paralyze us. Despite this, we each dolled out $16 — $14 for an hour of bouncing and $2 for the required green socks with sticky bottoms. From there, we put our stuff in cubbies and trotted to the trampolines.

And whoa there are a lot of trampolines. Most of them are in one massive rectangle, a patchwork quilt of black nylon. Mostly the trampolines are flat, but some go up the wall so you can bounce down and get some extra speed.

Only one person can bounce on each patch at a time, which crushed my dreams of launching my friend 20 feet in the air. Teenagers in referee shirts will whistle and yell at you if you break the rules. Unexpectedly, there was an upside to the one-per-trampoline rule: bunches of people formed lines and watched each other try different tricks and make little routines along lines of trampolines, which their friends would then try to top.

Aside from the basic trampolines there’s a dodgeball room (see video below), a few mats with basketball hoops, a couple horizontal ladders suspended over foam pits (the goal is to get to the end and back — few people make it) and two foam pits you can jump into with ultra-bouncy great trampoline mats. If you do a flip into the foam pit, a camera records it and instantly replays it for you while you struggle to swim out of the plush pit, trying your damnedest to hold onto your $2 socks as the foam and static tugs at them.

It was their first week open, so some glitches were to be expected. They included: the long line (only two desk workers), no toilet paper or paper towels in the bathroom, trash in the cubby area, the ninja obstacle course is under construction. Bored parents glared at their iPhones on wood boxes as their kids did backflips — I’d think a couple couches would be a nice touch. Some unexpectedly good things: Huge capacity = little wait time once you’re in the park, a separate park for the littlest kids, huge cooling fan on the ceiling.

Mostly, children filled up the trampoline park, with a handful of jumping adults. 8-14-year-olds were the dominant crowd.



What to know if you go:

-You’ll need $14 for an hour and $2 for socks. An extra hour will run you $8. Total $24 a person.

-If it’s busy (weekends, holidays), you’ll probably want more than an hour.

-Eat first. Once inside it’s all Doritos and Snickers.

-Wear shorts and a T-shirt/tank. Jumping is hard work.

-Once you buy their socks, you can keep them and reuse them if you go again.

-Make sure to look around before bouncing from one trampoline to the next – it’s much like skate-park etiquette (make good eye contact if someone else is waiting to use a mat, take turns).

-Falling is only scary the first seven times.

-My advice would be to wait a few weeks before going. The managers said it’s been crazy busy since they opened.

-Get Air is open noon-10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, noon to midnight on Fridays, 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays and 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Sundays. It’s at 921 Riverside St., Portland.

The takeaway from this? I thought $48 for my friend and me to jump for two hours was steep. But it was super fun. Because there are several stations and short waits at each of them we weren’t exhausted. The trampoline section has several islands where you can take a rest. Also … landing flips is hard: