Santa Maria sails the seven seas at Kids Wonderland in the Netherlands

The recreational area needed an upgrade to increase the customer flow. Santa Maria is the centre of attention in the playground but it is also surrounded by other exciting play equipment such as interactive Sona.

Adventure playground: A collaborative design

A design team consisting of Ruben Hartmann of Lappset’s subsidiary Lappset Yalp in the Netherlands and Reima Mukkala, designer of Lappset's design team in Finland, helped the client with modifications of the standard product by adding play challenges for children over 6 years, such as extra bridge and rotating elements at the rear part of the ship. A huge rope pyramid construction was also connected to the ship. Ruben designed the entire play area in collaboration with the client.

“The Santa Maria was the focal point of the play area. The design was drafted in close collaboration with the client, piece by piece. Actually, about 75 percent of our original design was approved by the customer already at the first meeting. The area design including the interactive play equipment Sona dance arch, surface solutions, and modifications of the Santa Maria proceeded easily together with the client. The entire play area is fully compliant with the EN 1176 safety standards.” says Ruben Hartmann of Yalp.

The ship together with the interactive Sona – a dancing and music game device for the outdoors – was installed together with the surface material, artificial grass, in ten days. The installation required a team of a total of seven persons.

The Santa Maria ship: A playground inspired by history

Sometimes history is the best source of inspiration for Lappset’s team of designers. In some other cases, the inspiration stems from contemporary features, like virtual gaming. One of the absolutely largest and most beloved standard playground products, the Santa Maria Ship, has its story deeply anchored in the history of the Italian adventurer Christopher Columbus.

Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean on his largest vessel, La Santa María, built in Pontevedra, Galicia, in Spain’s northwest region. The ship was owned by Juan de la Cosa and launched in 1460. The ship ran aground onto a sandbank on Christmas Eve, the 25th of December in 1492, outside Cap-Haïtien in Haïti.

The first Santa Maria playground ship by Lappset was raised at the beginning of the 1990s in Lisbon, to celebrate the famous seafarer’s voyages across the Atlantic. Ever since we have delivered similar playground ships to numerous locations in different parts of the world.