Riverside Park — Attraction in Moline

My aunt rented the small pavilion for our extended-family picnic. The pavilion itself is okay, though we were initially surprised that there were no built-in grills, as you'd typically find at these kinds of reserved picnic areas. But I get that they are probably a bit of a fire hazard, particularly with the green house area being not that far away. My main star removal is because of the bathroom situation. Your options are the pool building, which is a decent walk away, or bathroom stall building that is up on the hill, well past the large pavilion, by one of the external driveways into the park. I'm not great at gauging distance, but I think that was actually a longer walk. The bathroom stall building should be more accessible from the playground and secondary pavilion area.

Normally I'd have knocked off two stars for that, because it's making the park less handicap accessible. I was certainly not walking either distance, with my cane. I would literally have sooner walked to the parking area and driven my car to either location, and I am not one to increase my "emissions" just for convenience. And on that note, the parking area could use some lines (painted or suspended rope), consistent concrete-to-ground ratio, so you know where to park to leave adequate room for others to do the same.

But I had to put back one star for free city-provided WiFi in the park, that was a decent speed. That was a lovely surprise. And when my nephew got upset that they couldn't make the kite work (which one of his great-aunts had brought), because there was so little wind, it was nice to be able to let him play on his tablet for a bit instead.

One last point I would add is, the playground ground covering. I personally didn't go over with any of the younger kids to the playground, but everyone who did noted how bad the heat was. Apparently they did install a rubber-like material, to minimize injuries on the playground, which I appreciate. But the material they used looks like traditional blacktop, and it reflects heat terribly, making the playground even hotter than it already was, on this 100 degree heat-index day. In the future I hope they'll consider alternate options, such as the tiles in a light-blue slate color, similar to what Schwiebert Park uses. They may need more maintenance than what Riverside is using (the tiles at Schwiebert are starting to curl at the corners pretty significantly, after about 9 years), but given how little shade is over the playground, it's unfortunate that the safer ground materials kick off...

This is a wonderful park, especially for toddlers. The play equipment is designed for ages 2-5, so it's all fairly small and manageable. Multiple types of swings, including swings for special needs kids. Multiple covered picnic areas, a creek to explore, as well as the garden center. My only complaint is that the playground equipment isn't fenced in at all, which can be a challenge if you have multiple kids, especially runners, since there's a busy road on one side of the park and a street and parking lot on the other...

This is our favorite playground in Moline! It has great, accessible playground equipment. Plus there is a sand volleyball court that the kids play in. We also love roaming the garden, which provides for some really nice picture opportunities. Don't forget to go into the greenhouse and feed the fish!!! I wish the bathrooms weren't locked from between Labor Day and Memorial Day, because if it's nice out, we go to the park, regardless of the month of year, and my kids can't go an entire visit to the park without a...