With summer winding down, and school getting ready to start, we thought it was a good time to do one last family activity. None of us had ever been to Water World, so Daddy took a vacation day and we drove to the other side of Denver to visit the largest water park in the U.S.

I’ll admit I was nervous, because I did not know what to expect. I mean, my only experience with water parks was the indoor park at West Edmonton Mall. Plus, my kids do not know how to swim. What would we be able to do?

Water World is pretty accessible to get to. The parking lot was huge, we had no issues getting there and getting in. I had read some of the FAQ online, so I knew where to get tokens for the lockers. If you are planning to open your locker repeatedly, you might want to opt for the day long locker, which is $8. I only needed to lock up my purse, so the $1 locker was good for us.

I found we could rent life jackets for the kids for free, so we set them up with those. They were fine with that, and it gave me more peace of mind. All we had left to do was pick what to ride first.

(map courtesy of Water World)

The park is spread out (translation- lots of walking!), and we started our visit by choosing Raging Colorado, a raft ride we could do as a family. Squeals of delight came from our raft, and begging to ride it again. So we did. There was a girl photographing families, but sadly our photos are unavailable. We visited the Thunder Bay wave pool (which incidentally is smaller than the one at West Edmonton Mall), and the kids got a big kick out of that.

Finally persuaded them to move on, where we went on their favorite ride, Lost River Of The Pharaohs. This too was a family raft ride, but it featured a dark tunnel with mist and mummies. They wanted to do it repeatedly.

We wrapped up our visit at Big Top, which features a water spraying funhouse, silly shores pool, and Monkey Business, a low-key slide for two. We took the gondola back up to the North Shore Area, where we had started our day.

You could spend all day there- there is plenty of shade. A lot of people brought big coolers in and set up a base camp with towels. Definitely something to consider. We opted to make our visit a short one, but with the fun all four of us had, we’ll definitely be back. Though Water World is a little pricey, discount coupons can be found! And consider going mid-week. The lines were not too bad for us going on a Wednesday, when school had already started in some districts.

* I was given free passes for my family to visit Water World through USFG. This review is my honest opinion.