Copper Creek Mini Golf

Copper Creek Mini Golf    
1650 Hartford-New London Tpke, Montville, CT 06370

Copper Creek is probably one of the most unique mini golf courses we have ever played, and there isn’t just one reason! For starters, we should probably mention that no one under the age of 6 is allowed on the course. According to the company, “We have this rule to protect our guests as before this policy was in effect, we had an incident where a young child was injured. We are not willing to risk a potential injury of our guests.” It doesn’t affect us, but you will see the course get a few negative reviews online because of this policy.

Copper Creek is actually part of Nature’s Art Village, which is a family fun park that seems like it’s main attraction is “The Dinosaur Place”, which is a walking trail with over 60 life-sized dinosaurs. There are tons of other activities here as well, but we stuck to our mini-golf, which is separate from the rest of the experience.

The course theme is “Old West Mining Town”, which fits in well with some of the shops around Nature’s Art Village dealing with mining and materials. Each hole features facts about a different type of rock. While the theme holds up for most of the holes, it kind of deteriorates (or maybe explodes) with an oversized snake and a polar bear (still trying to figure this one out), but it is clear the course has been extremely well kept. The turf looked almost new, and all the surrounding buildings and animals were all beautiful.

Pricing was a bit on the high side at $13.99 a person, but the quality of the course is prestine, and this is comparable to a course like Essex County Mini Golf at Turtle Back Zoo, where there are other activities to enjoy. However, it still is a bit separated and contained, and it gives you the feeling of being boxed off from the rest of the park.

We will definitely be revisiting Copper Creek the next time we are in the area, as it was extremely challenging and we would want to see if we could get our scores up. One of our few gripes was that sometimes it felt challenging not for the sake of being interesting, but just to be difficult, or maybe even odd course design. It seemed fated that on certain holes it would be nearly impossible to get below a 4 (the course does have four Par 4 holes; out of 12 possible chances with our three players, we only managed to get a birdie three times). The course has a par of 51, which could easily be upgraded to a 54 or 55. We didn’t have a particularly great round; after clocking a few fives, our winner came in at 58. Our leader was four over on the front 9, and that trend just continued.