I want to give more stars, but simply can t based ...

I want to give more stars, but simply can t based on my stay. Overall, there is tremendous potential here and I acknowledge that my family s trip had some issues hopefully others do not run into.

Pros:
1. Location: anything you could want very close by including Six Flags and Gurnee Mills essentially across the street. Also great dining choices.

2. Amenities: While most of the dining we did not attempt due to not being able to sit in restaurants with COVID guidelines, I thought the in house Dunkin Donuts was great for the kids and also the adults enjoyed having coffee close by. I felt the range of activities outside the water park were great and mostly fairly priced and my kids enjoyed the ropes course and climbing wall. The one exception was the arcade where many games were in the 2-2.50 range depending on how many points you bought and if you have multiple kids the points will not last long.

Neutral:
1.Check in/check out: check out was perfect with a bye and no wait. Check in was a longer wait as staff had said that the reservation system was lagging . Not sure what that meant, but It did take awhile compared to the number of people in line. Check in staff did not mention to our party or other family members staying at hotel but they give out 2 types of wrist bands for the room and water park access. 1 with features to charge and enter rooms and 1 that is just a wrist band with no room entry available. Both of our parties gave the kids the bands with room and water park access. Just flip the bands over to make sure you have the ones with the chip.

Cons:
1. Water Park Safety: my 10 year old child stepped on a tack in the water park. This is an odd occurrence, but I m trying to figure out how a tack got in there in the first place. I assume this was dropped from staff and if so these sorts of sharps should not be allowed in a water park without exception as it is just asking for trouble. I was also concerned that my son came limping back to me after he noted this to staff who gave him a band-aide and cleaning towel. No incident report if it got infected later and no one escorted him back to his parents with the injury. As a former lifeguard instructor and aquatics manager, this just is not a way to do this work. Disappointed is an understatement.

2. Rooms: the room itself was ok. I actually enjoy the spacing as it is adequate for the number of guests. The tv features with apps were a plus for our family, however we had an issue where our in room smoke detector was randomly going off. The first time it went off on its own, the second time someone came up to change battery (I was not happy at all with the time it took for maintenance to get there as the noise bothered the kids). The third time, I did not have to wait nearly as long for maintenance but we had guests already sleeping who got woke up and had to mask up for maintenance staff who made the comment that the model was very old on the smoke detector. Simply, not a comfortable stay for our family.

Overall, reasonably I could see an instance where people did not have our issues and completely enjoyed their stay as well. For our family, we will likely stay somewhere else and enjoy theme parks, water parks, and shopping close by.