Excellent Water Park - Went with family here and had a fantastic time. Lots to do for all the family no matter the age ! Weather was great and plenty of space to roam around.

Rating comes with massive caveats. It could be anywhere from one star or 5 depending what you are talking about. - This place is a massive mix of positives and negatives. Let’s start with the positives. There are generally deals available for tickets. Don’t buy on the door. You will usually get 30% for single day tickets online. If you can go more than once, really good deals are available. It is worth going more than once for reasons I will get to. The slides are excellent. There are loads here that are among the best water slides I have ever gone on. You will want more than one go them and there are lots. The park is really big, clean and well maintained. Those are the upsides. Now the downsides. The prices once you arrive. Parking in a standard space is $32. It was hard to find a space even then. Paying for a “large” locker was $30. It was not large. The bigger one was over $40. The food is A) terrible. Cold, tastes like cardboard. B) MASSIVELY expensive. Drinks are also hugely expensive. As a family of be 6 in two cars we dropped over $250 within 30 minutes of arrival to add to the approx $400 for the tickets. Experienced park goers ensured they didn’t need the lockers and food. The lines. These are usually huge and very slow moving when the park is busy. There are a couple of slides that have multiple riders and short turns which mean the line is fast, but mostly they take a very, VERY long time. In addition, staff shortages seem to mean that rides with multiple slides are often not running all the slides, making the lines slower. There are two approaches. Either stump up the money for the unlimited quick queue, which is really expensive, OR what I would advise is be able to go twice. Get the second visit free tickets. Get to the park at around 3. At that time, having been open since 10, it begins to empty out. You will be able to get on the big rides with very minimal queues particularly in the last couple of hours. The park stays open until 8. Arrive post lunch. Leave before dinner. If you do this, you will ride a lot, queue little and minimise the expense. To make it really work though, you need to go twice!

Hot Day, Long Lines Fun Times in Wave Pool - I paid $42 for preferred park. Wasn’t worth it cause it was in the same place as regular parking $35. Got in an argument with my husband because he wanted me to move in the shady $35 parking area when I already paid for preferred 🤦🏾‍♀️. So annoying. It was also suggested to go to the park on Tuesdays or Wednesdays because of less people. Welp it really didn’t matter. Lines were still too long and some of the rides were closed due to bad sunny weather🤷🏾‍♀️ That was the excuse. So I decided to hang out at the wave pool. Best decision I made because I didn’t have to stand and I got rocked back and forth and stayed cool.

Lazy River was great - The Hubba Bubba lazy river was wonderful during the hot and humid weather. No tubes for the river, but they offer life jackets. The water coaster was fun, but the other ride we tried had over an hour wait, the water was very warm after waiting in the heat and we all felt like we were suffocating from the hot air on the slide. The tube was black, likely causing the issue during the very hot day - lesson learned. We did not try other rides as the lines were long, but did overall enjoy our time. Note - we did arrive just after open and the lines were very long for parking and then to enter the park. Plan accordingly, especially if you want a lounge chair.

AVIOD THE ALL DAY MEAL DEAL - Our recent visit to Water Country USA was generally very nice . Some of the waits in lines were excessive which kept the rating down. HOWEVER, we had paid for the ALL DAY MEAL DEAL, and found that to be generally a rip off. While food prices were high they were tolerable and unless you were going to eat every 90 minutes as permitted by the plan you were unlikely to spend enough to get your monies worth. Also, we were unable to find any ice cream items that were covered by the plan.

Fun slides, but too much line cutting! - We are local, and I have been to Water Country several times. We went again this weekend with my preteen kids and had a great time for the most part. But the one thing I really wanted to discuss was the level of line cutting and quick queue abuse that we saw. It was worse than I ever remember. First, line cutting. There was a very large extended family that seemed to be hitting the same rides and us at about the same time. Every time, there would be one or two members of the family ahead of us, and then more and more of their family members would move forward and cut in line until there would be 10 or 15 of them ahead of us. Although there were signs at every ride saying that holding places in line and cutting were strictly prohibited and grounds for being ejected from the park, there were no Water Country employees to monitor the lines and enforce this policy. Second, quick queue abuse. Water Country has an option to purchase a quick cue wristband that enables you to use the quick queue line, which is much faster than the regular line. The unlimited quick queue costs about $130 per person and every person who uses the quick queue has to pay. But there is nobody to enforce the policy and ensure that only people who have paid use the quick queue. As a result, we saw many people, especially older (relatively rough-looking) teenagers, using the quick queue without a wristband. When they get to the top of the right, there are only two or three Water Country life guards who are busy with loading people on tubes or rafts and focused on safety. There is no way they can monitor the lines, so the people who are using the quick queue without paying are getting away with it. Water Country needs to have line monitors stationed periodically along the regular line who can stop the cutting and call out non-paying people trying to use the quick queue. They also need to have a person at the top of the ride who is just monitoring the quick queue in case a person gets past the regular line monitors and then decides to jump into the quick queue. Each of the monitors should have a radio so they can call law enforcement (who are stationed at the entrance of the park) in the event that a cutter or non-paying quick queuer becomes belligerent.

Fun rides, long and slow lines, and quite expensive - On a beautiful, hot summer day that felt perfect for a water park, my wife and I went to Water Country USA. What a disappointment. * We got 2 one day tickets for $81 total. Seemed like a decent deal. But ... * A medium sized locker cost $30 to rent for the day * The lines were long and slow. 1 hour after arriving, we had taken one ride. * We waited in line 1 hour to pay an upcharge, essentially doubling the price of our tickets, for "Quick Queue," the fast line for rides. There were 3 windows at the help desk, but only 1 worker, thus the line was painfully slow. * Quick queue lines were shorter but still quite slow. * Several rides were operating at half capacity, i.e., one slide was running instead of two, or two instead of four. This obviously added to wait times, sometimes doubling them. * A manager said rides were operating below capacity because of a shortage of workers. * Food and beverages are comparable to movie theaters, e.g., $6.50 for a soda with no refills *The park is clean and nicely landscaped

Had fun but dirty water - The wave pool was dirty . So much trash in water. Also the food is not that good for the price bought some drinks 1 coke and bottle of water was 16 dollars. And also the smell of trash was not good near the wave pool. This is the first time I have been to water country in years past and it has been better.

Not what it used to be - As a long-time resident of Hampton Roads, I've visited Water Country many times over the last 20 years, but this was by far the worst experience I've had. The cost of tickets, parking, and food are WAY TOO HIGH. It was not over crowded on the Friday that my family of four went, but the staff is not nearly adequate to support the number of visitors; I can only imagine how bad it would have been on a weekend. Most of the rides were at half capacity and staffed by only one person at the top (typically, there should be 2 or more). Also many of the tubes/floats for rides were pulled aside and not accessible leaving large crowds waiting at the beginning of the line for an inflatable. The Quick Que passes are the other primary reason for our frustration. We watched a group of 6 kids with Quick Queue passes ride Vanish Point 3 times each while we waited to ride once (1.5 hour wait for that one). I'll need to see some limitations and rules in place for this Quick Queue "convenience" before I visit Water Country again.

Cluster F**k called water country - Cluster F**k is the best way to describe. We came with a camper in tow even tho we paid for parking and they gave us a ticket for RV parking. No one seem to know where that was. They sent us down the wrong row which was a nightmare trying to get turned around. This happened two more times. No one seem to understand how to park people, then we waited for over 40 minutes in line to get tickets. We were there for six hours and rode. Two rides. Lines were ridiculous. Employees were aggravated and rude. Patrons were upset and pushy. Don’t waste your money.