Lots of Fun, however Lots of Mess!
Written: Mar 26 '08 (Updated Mar 27 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Lots of choices, water slides, tubes, and a restaurant.
Cons: What a mess! They really need to work on their clean-up.
The Bottom Line: Great water slides, but very dirty. If they could clean the place more, I'd consider going back.
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| scottcolson's Full Review: Grand Rios Water Park Resort |
My wife and I, along with our 6 and 4 year olds, just took our first trip to Grand Rios water park, in Brooklyn Park, MN. This is located just outside the Twin Cities.
If you don’t live in MN, you may not understand the need for INDOOR water parks. We have the ability to swim and enjoy water outdoors only about 4-5 months out of the year. Because of this, we are getting more and more indoor water parks. Grand Rios is not far from our house, so this week, on Spring Break we made our first visit.
Now, maybe Spring Break in MN is not the best time to visit a water park. As we pulled into the parking lot, there were 8 busses of kids getting ready to leave. Thank goodness they were leaving! However, there were still a lot of people in the park and unfortunately the facility looked like it!
What are my pros and cons?
Pros:
There are a lot of different areas to explore. There is a 535 foot long lazy river, a basketball area, a little kid area with 2 or more small slides, and 2 medium water slides as well as lots of water guns.
For the bigger kids and adults there are 4 big water slides. They start 4 stories up! There are two that you slide down alone, a larger one that you go down on tubes (one or two at a time). The fourth slide is called the “hurricane.” I didn’t get to try the hurricane, but it basically drops you in a whirlpool type (think like a toilet bowl) slide into a 8 foot deep pool. The slides we tried (the other 3 big ones) were awesome! They were very fast, dark and surprising. However, they were tame enough for my 6 year old to enjoy. Thank goodness he’s a pretty good swimmer! I was amazed at how good the slides were. They were fun, fast and surprising.
The last really cool attraction is over in the kid area where the smaller slides are. Now, I’ve been to a lot of water parks and I’ve never seen anything like this. There is a huge “tipping bucket,” that they says holds 500 gallons of water. It’s at the top of all the smaller slides and play equipment. Anyway, every 10 minutes or so the bucket fills and dumps water all over anyone who is interested. That was really cool! The kids were fascinated to see all that water fall!
Cons:
There was one really big complaint I had. This place was FILTHY! I tried to let it slide, because there had been so many busloads of kids there before we got there. When we walked into the men’s locker room, there were dirty towels and clothes literally all over the floor. The floor was wet (almost 1 inch of standing water) and we had to search to find patches of floor to step around to get through the changing area. Now, I realize the busloads were just leaving, so I expected 4 hours later that things would be better. That couldn’t be further from the truth. When we left, the men’s locker room was still filthy, not any better. There is only one bench, so not much room to change.
Obviously, I didn’t enter the women’s changing room but my wife said that there was 1 inch of standing water in there also.
Things I didn’t try and can’t rate:
There is a restaurant and a fairly big jacuzzi/spa.
Of course, as I was reminded in the comments, I didn't comment on the hotel itself. There is a hotel attached, but we didn't stay in the rooms, so I can't comment on the hotel itself.
Overall, I think they have lots of great slides and equipment, but the lack of cleanliness is probably going to keep me from going back.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
scottcolson
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Member: Scott Colson, MD
Location: OH to NV, to IA, finally in MN!
Reviews written: 106
Trusted by: 91 members
About Me:
Family Physician practicing in the Twin Cities, MN
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