Riverfront Miniature Golf

Riverfront Miniature Golf    218 River Road, Unionville, CT 06085

Riverfront Miniature Golf should be proof that you don’t need a fancy gimmick or theme to be an outstanding course. Ironically, Riverfront sits less than 15 minutes away from Matterhorn Mini Golf, a course who is literally all about their theme, but both courses rank near the top of our list for their unique beauty, challenge, and design.

The course was built in 1995 and has lost none of the appeal over the 28 years. You won’t find any elaborate obstacles or design here. The course features several long fairways and hills that will make par a challenge. Boulders dug up from the site are some of the main obstacles, as well as several sloping greens, a grist mill, and a multitude of water features. It seems that there are also options for different hole locations on some of the holes, which would make a return trip even more interesting. The rear part of the course sits along the banks of the Farmington River, making the back 9 a beautiful scenic journey. All the turf was beautifully maintained, and the natural flowing water was very well integrated into the hole design. There is no set tee off location (even our “behind-the-brick” standard goes out the window on some holes) but we would prefer this to any of those rubber mats.

The par for this course is 48, and our winner came it at 44. Despite all of us having what we felt like was a poor showing, everyone came in under par, and we think our next visit could even be consistently sub-45. We weren’t able to snag any aces, despite 4 times having the ball spin around and out of the cup. A big plus in our book was the course was only $8/person (before 6pm, $9 after 6pm), a relatively low cost option in this area.

It’s hard to say that Riverfront comes up short in any way, because that would be doing a disservice to all the good things the course has going for it. It is definitely in our top courses; however, we don’t think we can really elevate it into must-see category just yet, at least not on our first visit. The Connecticut Valley area has become a hot spot for mini golf, with several very interesting courses all within 30 minutes of each other, and Riverfront is just needing something to make it stand out above the rest, other than just being an immaculately maintained golf course. Is it making the course a bit more challenging? Maybe updating the surrounding property? Could it be just putting in fresh new grass? We just can’t really put our finger on it, and we may change our mind by our next visit, because we will definitely be finding our way back.