Adventure Park Potsdam – What Awaits You in the Climbing Forest

The Adventure Park Potsdam is a high ropes course in the middle of the forest that offers climbing routes of different difficulty levels, including a crazy long giant rope slide. We were there and tested the fun factor and variety!

The light dances on the leaves, there is a thin rope with a barrel connecting two platforms high up in the tree and is that a skateboard over there in the air? At 9:40 a.m., when we were the first visitors to stand in front of the still-closed Potsdam  Adventure Park, we already got a good impression of what awaited us inside: a fun park for climbing, balancing and (relieved) laughing, where our adventure testers worked up a sweat at the latest on the harder climbing sections!

We tried out the Potsdam Adventure Park from the easy climbing routes to the most difficult climbing route (!) including the park’s giant rope slide. In this experience test, you’ll find out what exactly awaits you there and for whom a visit to the climbing forest is really worthwhile!

Note on transparency: As experience testers, two of us got to climb for free at the Adventure Park Potsdam, while the other two paid the reduced price for their visit. However, this experience report is unpaid and reflects our independent opinion.

The Experience Testers

Four of us went to the Adventure Park in Potsdam. We were joined by three adventure testers who had already had their first climbing experiences in the Indoor climbing park Bergwerk Berlin and in the Waldhochseilgarten Jungfernheide. We are all normally sporty.

The fourth experience tester was in a climbing park for the first time and surprisingly turned out to be a natural – she even dared to climb the most difficult climbing course from the Adventure Park Potsdam! (Unfortunately she didn’t want to be in the photos).

The Adventure Park Potsdam

At the Adventure Park Potsdam, there are various courses for children and adults. Younger visitors over 110 cm tall are only allowed to climb unaccompanied on the mini course at 1 m height. Accompanied by an adult, children 120 cm or taller are allowed to climb on beginner and newcomer courses, and on higher courses only from a height of 140 cm. Those who are 12 or older may also climb alone. However, the particularly difficult expert course is only open to climbers aged 15 and over.

On the higher courses, you balance up to 12 m above the ground. All climbing routes lead from tree to tree. A special feature of the Adventure Park is the 200-metre-long giant rope slide, which can be booked for an extra 3 euros. The minimum body weight for this is 35 kg.

All in all, the climbing routes are 1.7 km long and consist of 170 different climbing elements – however, this also includes the climbing routes for kids, which adults usually skip.

Helmets are compulsory when climbing and you are secured with a circumferential safety system all the time. This means that at the beginning of each climbing course, a park ranger hooks you into the safety system, from which you can only disengage after you have completely mastered the climbing route.

For children’s birthday parties and team events, the Adventure Park Potsdam offers special events every month – you can also book it for private parties.

Our Climbing Experience at Adventure Park Potsdam

At the beginning, everyone has to register digitally – but you can also do that in advance on the internet at home to save time. Then you go to the cashier and have the choice of booking the normal climbing package, which includes two hours of climbing, or booking an additional hour including the giant rope slide for 3 euros (but this can also be done later). We really wanted to try out the giant rope slide and therefore decided to do it.

Then everyone gets their climbing harness and a helmet and is instructed by a trained park ranger on how to put on the climbing harness properly and how the safety system works here.

Only then does the time count – so you only pay for the pure climbing time.

The Climbing Routes From Mini to Expert

All climbing routes start parallel next to each other and are labelled with a name depending on the level of difficulty: Mini (for children), Newcomer, Beginner, Student, Advanced, Fun, Expert, Specialist and Expert. And then there’s the giant rope slide.

We started with the beginner climbing course and then tried all the harder climbing routes up to the challenging climbing route for experts and the giant rope slide.

While the easier climbing courses lead along at a lower altitude and are great for getting used to, you are already quite high up on the fun, expert and specialist courses. Each climbing route consists of different obstacles, so it’s worth mastering each one and you’re always faced with new challenges.

We were particularly taken with the Fun climbing course at the Adventure Park Potsdam, where you have to ride from platform to platform in a kind of cage like in the jungle, jump onto a sledge and a snowboard, and there are many other fun obstacles that have a real adventure character. If you want a bit of that Indiana Jones feeling, this is the place for you!

Balancing on a barrel, clambering over the abyss in free-hanging rope loops and rolling from tree trunk to tree trunk on a barrel on a rope: In our opinion, the expert climbing course is quite something! And that’s a good thing, because the fun of climbing depends on the feeling of being challenged to jump over your own shadow – the sense of achievement afterwards is definitely terrific. Two of us, however, found the expert course too tough, but the others fought their way through and rightly felt like heroes afterwards!

For the giant rope slide, you first climb over a few elements until you stand on the platform on a tree at a lofty height, hook yourself in and hurtle 200 m to another tree. There you land softly in a net.

The All-round Safety System

A big advantage of the safety system used here compared to the double safety system with “Smarties” we knew from the two other climbing parks was that you didn’t have to hook and unhook yourself before each obstacle. This saved us a lot of time and we got through the courses more quickly. As a result, we managed to do all the climbing courses at the Adventure Park Potsdam that we wanted to try in the time we had.

One disadvantage, however, can be that you can’t break off and dismount in the middle of a climbing course – since you’re constantly latched on, this can mean mobilising your last reserves of strength and going all the way to the end! Of course, you can also simply climb backwards again – but then all the following climbers have to climb back and start again.

Summary of the Adventure Park Potsdam

Three hours of climbing, scrambling and balancing brought us varied fun and the great feeling of surpassing ourselves and really feeling our own bodies again. If you liked climbing on adventure playgrounds and trees as a child, you can experience the enthusiasm and ambition here again, which you feel as soon as you start.

In the middle of the forest between the trees, everyone is free to decide which course they want to try and will quickly notice that they become more skilled and more confident with each element. A great feeling – especially when you experience the sense of achievement together with friends or family.

We 4 city dwellers who all love nature visited the Adventure Park Potsdam on a sunny Sunday morning and started as soon as the park opened. It was not crowded and you could take your time for each element and walk the climbing courses at your own pace. We gradually increased the difficulty level and so had a moment of success after each track, feeling more confident and wanting to step up.

For adults, the climbing park offers very different, varied climbing routes for 2 or 3 hours, which, including a meal break, gave us enough time to climb all the routes we wanted to climb and really work ourselves out.

According to the park rangers, you don’t really need much strength in your arms to climb in the Adventure Park Potsdam- footwork, surefootedness and a sense of balance are much more important. I have to admit, however, that my muscles were a bit sore the next day and that I had to use my strength especially on the more challenging tracks – but I’m not an experienced climber either.

Conclusion

We spent three entertaining hours in the perfect weather at the Potsdam Adventure Park, where we all got our money’s worth, exerted ourselves and had an enormous amount of fun.

Adventure Park Potsdam – Facts

• Website: www.abenteuerpark.de
• Address: AbenteuerPark Potsdam – Tree Event GmbH, Albert-Einstein-Str. 49, 14473 Potsdam, Germany
• Contact: Phone: 0331-6264783 // email: [email protected]
• Opening hours: 10am-4pm/17pm or 7pm depending on the season
• Age: Children only accompanied by adults, some courses only allowed from 1.10 m, 1.20 m and 1.40 m minimum height!
• Climbing time: 2 h – 3 h depending on booking
• Price: Adults 22,00 € per person // Pupils, students & trainees: 19,00 € pP // Children under 12 years from 140cm 16,00 € and up to 140cm 14,00 € // only MIniparcours 10,00€. For detailed information see website!

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