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soaking fun adventure island

    My oldest daughter’s birthday happens during the summer, and she loves to get wet. From swimming to playing in the surf, every birthday consists of some sort of getting drenched. Last summer we took her to Wild Waters in Ocala, because when I was growing up that was the closest water park. In my memory Wild Waters was the craziest, coolest place in the world. As it turns out, Wild Waters hasn’t updated their park one iota since I was fifteen, so it was hardly worth the two-hour drive.

    This year we decided to keep it in the neighborhood and go to Adventure Landing’s Shipwreck Island water park. We found it to be far better than the one that is hours away, and the cost is about the same.

    The Pirate’s Play Village is a castle and a pirate ship that towers out of the center of a large wading pool. It has water cascading over every edge and shooting down in bursts from the waterslides above. Children of all ages can enjoy this play area. From pre-teens having water fights through the tunnels and passages, to the kids that climb straight to the top and ride any of the four slides that are quick rides down for any child old enough to hold their own in the water. On the ground floor of the Pirate’s Play Village, the water is only to your ankles and there are tunnels, passageways, water guns, and small slides for young children. Surrounding the Pirate’s Play Village is a shallow wading pool that makes the perfect play area for toddlers and the smallest children. Parents can relax in chairs around this wading pool and keep a close eye on their small ones, though lifeguards are never far away maintaining safety and keeping older kids from running and roughhousing around the smaller children.

    Winding a slow and relaxing path around the Pirate’s Play Village is the “Lil’ St. Johns River,” which is a lazy way to cool off in an intertube. It is also a fun and safe little waterway for swimming. Only about 4 feet deep, the little lazy river is pushed by a current that keeps it moving. It goes under a waterfall at one point to make sure you don’t dry off too much.

    The Rage is a long, winding uphill waterslide that you ride two at a time. Tighten the strings on your swimming trunks and enjoy this classic waterslide. After the excitement, The Rage drops you into the Lil’ St. Johns River. On the other side of the park there is the Hydro Half Pipe. This ride is exactly what it says, a tall and steep half-pipe. The ride attendant launches you off one side and you drop straight and fast. When you ride up the other side, there is a moment of fear that this ride wasn’t made for you; that your particular size and shape will cause you to fly off of the edge of the ride. This does not happen, of course, the ride is perfectly safe, but the sensation made me run back up the stairs and thrill myself on this ride over and over again. Finally, “The Eye of the Storm” is Adventure Landing’s newest ride.

    My daughter and her friends got to calling this ride “The Giant Toilet” because it gives you the sensation of getting flushed down a giant drain. At the top you launch into a spiraling, pitch-black tube and it spits you into a bowl, in which you slide around and around, circling the drain, until you plop through the hole in the center and drop into the 8-foot deep pool below and swim easily out of the small pool. All of us did this ride several times and we agreed it was the most fun slide in the park.

    The only attraction we didn’t spend much time in was the wave pool. Even in the deep end, the water was pretty shallow, and it was as hot as a bath. Between the high chlorine content and the warm temperature of the water, the wave pool was not as refreshing as some other wave pools we have been in. At the shoreline of the wave pool there is also another small children’s play area called Kiddie Cove, where you can get your toddlers away from underfoot of the older kids in the Pirate’s Play Village.

    At $26 per ticket, it may be priced a little too high to go every weekend, but when your kids are into an exciting waterpark (and you want some thrills too), Adventure Landing on Beach Boulevard is the best option in North Florida. Get there early to avoid long lines and the park closing due to storms. Go to adventurelanding.com/jaxbeach for more details.