Review of Coco Key Resort in Rockford, IL

Don't hate me because I'm stupid. I didn't get any photos of the water park... so the one I have I stole from the web.

This weekend we stayed for three nights at the Clock Tower Resort in Rockford, IL, while we visited my parents for the holidays. X-man has an easier time doing nap/quiet time in a hotel and it had an indoor water park and a MASSIVE arcade that we could play in for gross motor time.

The Clock Tower is older than I am. I don't remember ever staying there as a kid, but our relatives would. Mostly we just swung by to pick them up or to get on the bus that goes to O'Hare Airport. 

Our room (2110) had been recently refurbished. Things were still old (manual thermostat), sliding glass door that was leaking cold air (the high for two of the days was like -3) like crazy, the heater was pretty noisy and I'm pretty sure the TV won't be compliant with the change over to Digital in 2009, but you know... it was clean, it had comfortable beds and brand new soft sheets and towels. 

The water park wasn't very big, but it was full of fun stuff. It had a third party vendor (Pizza Hut) that provided food on the premises, as well as a bar area for eating that had burgers and fries (yeah, eating healthy was really not possible). There were two hot tubs for parents. Kids 5 and over were welcome with adult supervision. One had an indoor outdoor gate, but since it was so cold outside, it was closed. The indoor-outdoor hot tub also had a large TV so we could watch the Patriots kick Arizona's butt in the middle of a blizzard from our warm hot tub. 

This is an awesome waterpark for kids ages 5 through 14. The Parrot's Perch was a whole plastic climbing and sliding arena made for kids 40" tall and above. It also had plenty of water guns and wheels to turn to shut off/turn on water. X-man had a ball with the moveable water table (the different levels could be moved around easily). But he was scared away from the Perch when a bells starting ringing and he had like 8 seconds to get away before a GIANT bucket of water was dumped over the whole thing.  And man, it sprayed the place down.

X-man's favorite area was the Dive-in pool. It had two larger water slides for kids 40" and over. X-man went down them a couple of times. But he LOVED the basketball hoop in the zero depth pool. We played catch and made baskets for a long time. There were also water cones that filled up and dumped over occasionally (like at Sholem).

For bigger kids, there were two body slides and one tube slide. The slides went OUTSIDE of the water park. There wasn't a time where I was away from the little one to try them, but the slides emptied into a pool that then flowed into the lazy river, which we did ride on. The water there was 10-15 degrees colder, plus, it backed into the emergency exits that were NOT weather stripped. Cold air just flew into the humid pool area at the lazy river and left both X-man and I shivering while we watched the cold air turn to steam.

It is definitely worth staying at the resort and getting a package that adds tickets onto your room. You can do it so that you pay an extra $40 a day and get 4 "free" tickets a day. Admission to the park is between $25 and $30 (more expensive on weekends) and daily admissions are limited (i.e. hotel folks get first priority). We included my sister and got 4 tickets for $10 each for the one day.

I wouldn't have paid the $30 per person to just go for the day.

There is also an arcade filled with fun stuff: Guitar Hero, Pac-Man, Skeeball, Whack-a-mole, Car racing games, Star Trek games... X-man and I played for an hour and a half the second day while MacTroll was off doing some work and getting the VW a new battery (long story).

I put $20 on a card (like Dave and Buster's) and we had a ball. We traded in all of our tickets for a slew of lollipops for the potty candy bag, which was very convenient. 

Overall, I think for longer trips, we'd be willing to do this again. It wore X-man out enough that he napped 3 out of the 4 days we were in Rockford. Plus, it got him pool time, which he hardly gets any more (well, at least until we start swimming in January).