Breaker Bay Indoor Water Park Review

We took X-man to Breaker Bay Indoor Water Park today from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. If Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington is a key first zoo experience, this was a great first waterpark experience for our toddler. Professional water park visitors might be willing to stop by for an afternoon, but it's probably not a weekend destination, unless you happen to be in Sheboygan in Wisconsin in January. In which case it might be fun to watch snow fall over Lake Michigan while you ride around the lazy river in your bathing suit.

MacTroll and I both went down one of the two water slides, so X-man could see us come out the bottom. We also watched MacTroll come down one of the two tube slides. There was a very tiny lazy river, which worked out great because X-man has a short attention span. 

In addition. there's a huge tower of water toys that connects to the line areas for the body and tube slides (No one was there on a Sunday in September so there were no lines to speak of). The water tower has water guns, showers, buckets and all kinds of fun stuff to pull, turn and pull, even if you don't plan on going down the slides, you can have fun running around this water world. 

X-man's attention though was caught every 10 minutes when a bell at the top of the water tower started clanging warning that a GIANT bucket of water contained in a bow of a ship was going to tip and pour an obscene number of gallons of water (1,000) on top of folks below. (Movie of this will come later when I get home, the satellite internet link up is a little testy.)

X-man didn't take part (even though he likes to watch, the pressure's a bit too much for someone his size, in the movie at the bottom of this post you'll see the dad send his pre-schooler out of the way and the Mom almost lose her bathing suit bottoms) in the big boat dumping. But X-man did take part in a little people version at the S.S. Minnow which contained a lot of wheels for toddlers to turn to control turning on and off water on the little shipwreck. X-man would pull on a lever and a large tub of water would dump on top of his head (photo below). Most of the kids seem to enjoy pulling the lever and running a way while giggling and hearing the water crash behind them. Then the parents would fill up the pan and it would go on and on and on. Until one of the kids would figure out how to pull the rope to fill the pan for the others. 

One of my favorite parts of this water park were the slides for toddlers/pre-schoolers. There were three slides that gave X-man the sense that he too could be a big kid because they weren't contained in any "kiddie pool" area like at home, but it was forbidden for anyone taller than 42 inches to go down them. X-man started out on the beginner slide (the red one) and then advanced to the super fast blue ones. 

Unfortunately, in order to go on them, he had mommy at the top of the slide and daddy at the bottom to catch him. So we we didn't get a photo of him on it. But he was really cute. It was slippery up there, so X-man slipped a couple of times when he got really excited and didn't follow the "No running" rule. 

There's also a 3-4 ft deep pool to swim in with two water basketball courts and some floaties that are tied to the bottom of the pool that kids can climb on and jump off. The floaties look like rays, turtles and snakes. There's also a water obstacle course for older kids and adults.

In addition to the water park, there's a small arcade upstairs, but you've got to be dressed to go in. 

We ate at the snack bar around noon. All outdoor food was forbidden, so no bringing your own lunch. Our combo meals were $5 each, which is pricey in comparison to McDonald's. 

After lunch, we changed and got into the car and drove around the lake front. X-man fell asleep in 15 minutes. So if that's a measure of a good time for a toddler, he really enjoyed it. It also reinforces my plan to stay at a water park in Rockford when we go up there for Christmas.