Langley Company Builds World’s Largest Playground

Soft-play playground | BCBusiness
Part of the Billy Beez’s record-setting playground.

A Langley company has built a playground in Saudi Arabia that holds the Guinness World Record

 
Iplayco Corp. Ltd. constructed a recent project, a soft-play area for Billy Beez, a 25,000-square-foot indoor entertainment centre for children, that has since captured the world record for the largest indoor soft playground.

Billy Beez is owned and managed by Arabian Centres Ltd. Co. and is located in the massive Mall of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. The soft-play playground, which can accommodate up to 2,500 children simultaneously, opened May 25. It features a climbing wall, ropes course, multiple slides and an obstacle race course.
 
Iplayco was founded in 1999 and designs, manufactures and installs customized indoor and outdoor play structures for children. It is the only publically traded company in playground manufacturing and is also one of the largest companies in the industry, says CFO Max Liszkowski.
 
The Billy Beez order isn’t the company’s biggest order (that came from an intricate playground in Qatar), but it is the largest structure they have ever worked on.
 
“We were quite happy that these guys set a Guinness World Reccord,” says Liszkowski.
 
Most orders are for indoor playgrounds that are considerably smaller, ranging in size from 6,000 to 10,000 square feet. Iplayco also owns and operates a 12,000-sq-ft family entertainment centre called “The Great Escape” in Langley.
 
Iplayco founder Scott Forbes has known the owners of Billy Beez for approximately 20 years, according to Liszkowski. They met through playground manufacturing trade shows and started doing business together in 2010. Iplayco has completed 10 orders for them to date. 
 
“2013 has been the company’s best year on record,” says Liszkowski.
 
Iplayco, like other playground manufacturers in the Lower Mainland, is experiencing a boom in business. Liszkowski believes that this can be attributed to consumer entertainment spending bouncing back from the recession.
 
“A big part of it is that people are just getting back to business and are putting the recession years behind them,” he says.