After waiting two weeks for our season pass armbands that serve as everything from gaining entry to paying for food to identifying particular people in photographs taken by the official photographers, opening day arrived at Wet ‘n Wild Sydney. Our armbands still haven’t arrived. Instead, we waited in line before the park opened and had to collect and activate new ones. We thought we’d be waiting in line for hours, since the crowd was predicted to be 20,000 strong on opening day, but my friend Romana, who got there before me, only waited a few minutes.
Since Romana brought Hannah’s best friend Violet, and I brought Hannah (Daniel was at daycare), we only got to experience the kids area and the lazy river. So if you want to know about how cool the other slides and things are, you’re not going to find it on this post. Sorry. One day I will get there sans kids, but that hasn’t happened as yet.
The kids area had plenty of stuff for them to do. First we came across a vast soft-fall covered water spout area with a downpour bucket and various sprinklers, where they very small kids, as well as older ones, can run around and get soaked without being in a pool of water. There is also a slide area with one entrance at the bottom that goes either left or right at the top. To the left are four slides that require tubes. Two of the four slides only accept single tubes with single riders, who must be under a certain height or they are not allowed on. Too bad if you have a really tall 8 year old, he won’t be allowed to go down those slides.
The other two slides allow double tubes, and as long as one of the riders is under the stick height, the other rider can be an older child or an adult. I took Hannah down the double tube slides. Since she is small, I had to put my legs over half the hole area of her side to make sure she didn’t fall in. This meant that I had to sit with my legs open, so I’m hoping that my swimmers stayed where they were supposed to whilst I got on the tube, otherwise the slide attendant would be getting an eyeful. Note to self, wear shorts next time. I did wear a skirt over my bikini bottoms, but that was clearly not helpful when laying on a tube with my legs spread.
At the bottom of the slides, a lifeguard was there to pull us to the steps and help Hannah get out, which was quite useful. The morning slide attendants at the top of the slides let me take the GoPro down with me, saying that since it has a wrist strap, it was ok because there wasn’t any danger of it falling in. The afternoon attendants, however, made me leave it at the top and come back for it.
To left were the body slides – the slides you go down with no tubes or anything else. Unfortunately, they don’t allow anyone over a certain height to go down them at all, even if you are accompanying a 2 year old. That was fine for us, since our girls are 4. Hannah and Violet can walk up to the slides themselves, choose which slide they like, and then let the attendant tell them when to go while we wait at the bottom of their chosen slide to make sure they get out ok.
Some of the slides have a bit of water at the bottom, so an adult really needs to be there to make sure there are no drowning or choking on water incidents. You can also see the top of the slides and the line area from the bottom, which means sending a 4 year old up there by themselves is actually doable. It also means that there are a bunch of kids with no parents in the lines which equates to chaos, and cutting in line. There are only two attendants to 6 slides, so if your child isn’t game enough to speak up when their chosen slide is called, they could be waiting quite a while.
There is no way that I could bring Daniel there by myself. He would need me to take him up to the top of the slides (the smaller ones without water at the bottom, since adults are not allowed to go on the slightly bigger ones with the kids), and to wait in line with him, but he’d also need me to be there at the bottom so he didn’t get out and run off somewhere, or get upset that I wasn’t waiting there for him. There isn’t enough time to put a child on the slide and run then run down to meet him/her at the bottom, so it is impossible to take a small child to Wet ‘n Wild on your own.
The most ridiculous thing about Wet ‘n Wild is not the $16 burgers, although they are clearly a rip off, but the fact that parents can’t go down water slides in the kids area with their small children.
Speaking of $16 burgers, outside food isn’t allowed (although I brought my own snacks in and no one said anything. Shhh….), and all the food is ridiculously expensive. Burgers and fries for $16, a hot dog for $6. There aren’t many choices either. Don’t forget to bring your own water as there are no water fountains (that we found anyway), and one bottle of water is $4.50.
We stayed at Wet ‘n Wild for the majority of the day, and we all had a great time, especially since the lines were incredibly short and there weren’t many people around (so much for that 20,000…). We already have another trip planned, and many more after that 🙂 I’m definitely glad we purchased gold season passes.
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