Tilden Merry-Go-Round
Kid essentials
About this place
A restored Herschell-Spillman carousel with hand-carved animals, $4 a ride or $22 for a book of seven. There is a snack stand, a restroom and parking right there, which makes it an easy stop rather than an expedition.
How kid-friendly is it?
Nearby places
A scaled-down steam train that loops along the ridge in Tilden, $4 a ride or five for $16. Weekends and holidays year round, 11 to 6, closing at nightfall in winter.
Cows, goats and chickens at the end of a short walk from the Canon Drive car park, and it costs nothing. Bring celery or lettuce - the farm asks people not to feed the animals anything else.
The one with the secret staircases. Rock formations to scramble on and enough tucked-away corners that older kids will disappear for a while.
A rose garden near Codornices Park reachable through a tunnel.
Home of the famous 40-foot concrete slide that big kids bomb down on cardboard - plus a creek, a fenced toddler area, and the Berkeley Rose Garden through the pedestrian tunnel across Euclid. A Berkeley childhood rite of passage.
A rock formation in North Berkeley that kids can climb and scramble on.