I’ve always been a bit skid-dish about water parks, but after we moved to Honolulu we heard from many people how memberships at the local water park, Wet-N-Wild, is a must.

After over a year of hearing about it, we decided to get a family membership with their annual “pay for the rest of the year, get next year free” sale. We figured, a day pass is incredibly expensive so a membership pays for itself if you go more than once. Plus, we got the Kahuna membership, since, if we did not, we would have to pay for parking each time we went. A single day pass ticket runs you about $55 with parking at $20/vehicle, while a family of 4 Kahuna membership is $80/person for the year.

We weren’t sure what to expect the first time we went, but we learned quickly how this water park works and will break down the pros and cons of Wet-N-Wild.

Pros
-It’s a fun getaway from the beach. As much as we love sitting on the beach a few hours, sometimes we want to play in the water without the sand.
-Our boys meet the height requirements to go on almost every single ride.
-The lazy river is pretty long.
-The rides they do have there are fun.

Cons
-The park itself is pretty small and you can do most of the rides within a very short period of time.
-Sometimes all the rides are open, and sometimes a good amount are closed. When you only have 20 rides to begin with, and 3-5 of them are closed at once, it makes for a downer of a day.
-Our boys get bored of the park really fast. They are always excited to go and after an hour they are done and just want to play in the wave pool. The excitement of the park wears off quickly. They get tired of waiting in the lines for rides that go by quickly and just want to play in the water.
-There is usually a shortage of water tubes for everyone. We have waited in very long lines to just get a tube to then go wait in a very long line to go down a slide. We even had an adult woman steal a tube from Gabriel when he was waiting for us as we were coming down a ride because she didn’t want to wait.

Things to know:
-If you want to rent a locker, it’s not cheap. $15 for a small and $18 for a large.
-You have to pay for parking if you don’t have a gold or kahuna pass.
-They check bags for food. The only thing we’ve ever been able to bring in is water.
-People “reserve” lounge chairs by putting towels on them, but never actually sit on the chairs. We hardly ever find lounge chairs available.

All in all, we would not add Wet-N-Wild to our short list if we were only in Oahu for a week or two. We would only recommend it if you can do it as we did – purchasing the yearly pass that’s good for 16 months.

And to be completely honest, we have decided not to renew our membership. It’s just not worth it in our opinion.

What are your thoughts on water parks?