Pros:
The Bluebird Park DGC is like two different courses in one. Holes 1-4 play up,down and through some very rough, extremely tight and challenging terrain. Then 5 to 8 opens up and give you reason to take a breath again before finishing with quirky little # 9.
Bluebird Park is a large city park with aquatic center, tennis courts, playgrounds areas, picnic facilities and a dog park. The disc golf course seems to be in a section of the section little used by the general park population. I understand why, It's too rough and treacherous to let mere mortals in there, only us crazy disc golfers can venture in!
The course has a small kiosk at the beginning. There's a small sign pointing you to the disc golf course. There is a mailbox at the beginning. It was filled with cobwebs. The course has these nifty little tee signs. They're brand new looking, made out of a stone quartz material, with the information painted on. They are very pretty and I think they'll hold up to the vandals. The tee pads are natural, very rough and ugly. The baskets are single chain Discatchers with the yellow bands and multiple numbers on them. I personally didn't have any putts spit out.
Hole # 1 plays 261-347 down an extremely tight fairway on a sloping hillside. Miss right or hit a tree and it could be really difficult to recover.
# 2. 257-377' plays along the same sloping ridge only with a tighter 20 foot wide fairway. Footing was extremely treacherous here. I didn't even want to miss right and have to climb down and back up the steep embankment.
# 3. 170-258' Another tough hole throwing an anhyser shot downhill shot all the time praying you don't have a rollaway down the steep bank. And just walking to these baskets is a test of your balance, agility and overall fitness level. I'm truly surprised I survived these holes.
# 4 was the most difficult hole for me although not quite as scary. It's 256-304' playing uphill with a tight impossible angle, all on the hillside of the mountain.
By now, playing by myself, I'm thinking about how I'm not having any fun, there's too much pressure on me to execute perfect throws, I hope just to not to go tumbling down the deep ravines and probably break a major bone or two and mostly I'm hating on this course!
Then the course opens up into some open fields. # 5, although a blind basket placement ends up being a rather boring hole with the basket sitting out in the middle of an open field.
# 6 was a very cool hole 466-701'. It's a long straight downhill with the large open field narrowing to a smaller gap before opening up again. The basket was placed on the far edge in the woods. Good challenge!
# 9 was a very strange little finishing hole. It's just a short 164-180' uphill throw over the "Cross At Bridge Sign". The basket sits up in the trees above you to the right.
Cons:
Crummy natural tee pads.
Very treacherous footing, loose rocks, makes walking dangerous, especially on first four holes. I can't imagine playing this course after rains.
Extreme sloping hillside and dense trees making first four holes as much luck as skill. Errant shots punished harshly.
Lack of maintenance is obvious.
Other Thoughts:
As challenging as this course is, there just wasn't the enjoyment factor here for me. Playing alone, I was so concerned with shot placement and so worried about caroms skipping down the steep, nasty embankments on the right and to top that off, the trekking from pad to basket was extremely nerve wracking. And I actually killed it with great shots (for me) on the first three holes before crumbling on # 4.
Much of my rating is always based on my personal enjoyment factor and it just wasn't there for me at Bluebird. It's not a course to tackle alone. It's a not a course for beginners or those who can't control their drives or those not in decent physical condition. And seeing how much of this describes me as a disc golfer, it's not surprising that this course was not to my liking.