Coco Key: A Review

Looks like this week is the week to catch up on posts that should have been done a long time ago!

A few weeks ago, I decided to take The Son to Coco Key, an indoor water park at the Marriott in Mt. Laurel, NJ. It's a little more than an hour drive from where we live and I had heard it was nice so I thought it would be a fun summer treat for him. Although I think tickets are a bit higher right now, I paid $26 per person for us to go. I packed lunches that we ate in the car because I didn't want to spend money on food AND I knew that there would probably not be any healthy options available. I was definitely right about that. The Son got a big kick out of sitting in the front seat having a "car picnic" though, so it all worked out great (yes, this was when we were parked, not driving!)

Here's a shot of some of the slides, etc. You can see The Son in the lower right hand corner of the second one.



Coming down one of the slides...

Check out that six-pack on Momma's little surfer!





Not too sure about this one...


Oh yeah, that's a lovely shot of me...not! Well, at least my arms look kind of thin! ha ha!


So, you can see from the pictures that The Son had a good time. I however, had a few complaints. It wasn't terrible but I highly doubt I'd go back again. First of all, a big complaint that I had was even though I searched and searched the website for height restrictions, I was unable to find them. There are also pictures on the website of parents and children going down slides together and the children don't look much bigger than The Son. This made me think that there were in fact, no height restrictions but unfortunately, I was very wrong. There were three BIG slides that guests could go down, two where you ride on tubes and those were both for guests over 48" tall. Well, The Son is no where near 48" tall so he was unable to go down. I didn't make a big deal about how disappointed I was but the slides were really fun and he would have LOVED it! (Yes, I went down, he went down the body slide at the same time and we ended up in the pool together.) Honestly, I think the only reason he was too small was because the inner tubes were too big for him, had they invested in some smaller "kid-size" tubes, more people could go down. I say that because there were plenty of other activities that ended up in the same depth of water AND the water was fairly shallow anyway so it most likely wasn't because of that. So, needless to say, I felt a bit ripped off because The Son, whose ticket cost the same as mine, was only able to go down 1 out of the 3 big slides.

I also didn't feel that the park was extremely clean and it wasn't warm enough. They advertise that it's 84 degrees but it sure didn't feel like that and remember, I spend hours in the pool teaching swimming lessons so I know a warm pool when I feel it!

Lastly, the only food options they had in the park area were fast food choices and a bar with cocktails for the grown-ups. That might have made things a bit more fun, but since I had to drive an home... I didn't imbibe. ;) Like I mentioned, I was aware of this and packed accordingly, please note however, that you are not allowed to bring food and drinks into the park. Hence, our "car picnic."

I received an e-mail survey a few days after I attended the park and I filled it out with the above comments. A few days later I received a 15% off coupon to use should I want to return... ummmmm, no thanks, 15% off won't even cover my gas to get there again. A free overnight room at the Marriott, sure, we'll be back, 15% off, no thanks.

So to sum it all up, it was OK. The Son had fun and would definitely go back again but I probably wouldn't give him the choice. ha ha! I also learned that you can't just trust a website for accurate information and should call with any really important questions.

There's lots of other Coco Key Resorts so go ahead to their website if you're interested in finding out if there's one near you. I do hear they often have promotional codes you can find on-line. There weren't any when I looked but you may be luckier.

Enjoy your Tuesday everyone... I'm still at the Y being creative with art!