Wild Waves is an excellent, independent water and ...

Wild Waves is an excellent, independent water and theme park with a "small town" vibe. Their season pass is a steal- if you buy at the right time from them or from groupon you only have to pay 50 dollars for unlimited visits. I had a season pass for a few years as a kid, and for the last two years as an adult.

The water park is their strength. Wild Waves has a wave pool, an activity pool, four different slide towers, a kid's play area with slides, and two different lazy river-style rides. On the theme park side, they have two quality roller coasters, one metal rollercoaster that goes upside down and one wooden roller coaster built during their "Six Flags" days, and a variety of carnival style rides (bumper cars, an extreme scream drop ride, pirate ship, a log ride, etc.) They have a nice-sized collection of kiddie rides, though many of them have a height "maximum" so parents cannot ride with their kids. My toddler nephew loves that their is a mini-rollercoaster we can all ride together.

Wild Waves other strength is their special events. They do movie nights during the summer where they show movies on a blow-up screen over the wave pool. During October, they offer Fright Fest where they have 3 different haunted houses at night, and some kiddie activities during the day. Each December, they decorate the entire theme park for Christmas with lights and blowups and a laser show.

Wild Waves does have some "small park" quirks that can be frustrating at times.
- Consistency is NOT their strong-suit. Some of the height requirements seem arbitrary, and depending on the life guard or ride attendant, what rides your little one can go on can fluctuate from shift to shift. For instance, 8 times out of 10, my 2-year-old nephew could go in the hot tub with us, but every once in a while, they'd kick him out for being too short.
- The bathrooms aren't always the cleanest, and a lot of the food is mediocre. (However, the hand-dipped, made-to-order corn dog food truck is consistently delicious. Other good dessert options include soft-serve ice cream, dip-n-dots, homemade fudge, and freshly made elephant ears.) - Many of the lifeguards and ride attendants are local teenagers. Some are excellent and on-the-ball. For example, we had one lifeguard who stood up for a little girl when an unrelated adult was trying to bully her into giving up her seat in the hot tub. The Wild Waves staff is ethnically diverse, which is great for the overall culture of the water park and reflects the diversity of attendees. However, a few of the staff struggled with English to the point that they seemed unable to answer basic questions about the rides they were operating. There also were a couple of apathetic life guards that concerned me with their complacency towards addressing obnoxious or unsafe customer behavior like line-cutting or rough-housing in the lazy river.

One major plus is that Wild Wave was brought under new management a couple years ago, and the new management seems responsive to guest feedback and is slowly, but surely, making improvements to the park. They put in stairs to replace a dangerously steep and slippery ramp. They replaced the water heater for the activity pool and raging river ride so those attractions are now enjoyable even on a chilly summer day. They also responded to guest feedback about Fright Fest: When they proposed limiting season pass holders to only getting in free the first few weekends, season pass holders expressed their discontent and they changed the policy before it ever went into effect. In 2018, we experienced a lot of problems with line-jumping and cutting at the haunted houses that made the lines ridiculously long (over an hour wait). This year, they added additional line queues/barriers, hired an outside security agency to patrol and manage lines, and posted signs saying you could be kicked out of the park for line-cutting. As a result, the line process went much smoother.