Smith is, indeed a special place.  A huge playground, slide and an entire enormous house filled with rooms of toys, rooms of climbing stuff, rooms for building things, a little town for riding tricylces in the basement, complete with stoplights.  The house is a place to play when the playground is off limits because of weather.

really amazing.  We had an enormously tall, metal slide on my first grade playground.  It stood there for a long time, but eventually was taken down for safety.  We continued to play there even in the summers when we were in middle school because the swings, geodesic dome style jungle gym, heavy see-saw and huge fast slide were the best around. 

I recently visited nephews and found a very good playground with really intriguing equipment which challenged the way a person thought about physics.  Very possible to have something safe and fun.

yes!  I have been somewhat dismayed by modern playgrounds.  we came across this very cool one in Luxembourg a few years ago - not sure how modern the park is, but it was strikingly different compared to what I see in Seattle.  click on my link to see pictures (scroll down in the post).  we dream of going back now that Maggie is old enough to use some of the equipment.