We came for a long weekend. 6 adults, one teen, one 6 year old and three 2 year olds. We decided to rent one hotel room and 2 cottages, when we got here our rooms would have held about half our people, after we saw our rooms we knew that we couldn't all fit without sleeping on the (nasty) floors. It was over $1000 for three rentals for two nights, we could have definitely stayed at a very nice hotel for less than the run down cottages. The girls finally upgraded our rooms (and were nice about it), so we got a bigger cottage for one group. That is the only positive thing I can say about the entire cottage experience. The doors have a simple handle lock and usually don't shut, we came back to our cottage at one point and the door was wide open. Nothing was missing, but we weren't happy. We slept with furniture in front of our door, just to feel a bit safer. There is a working a/c unit, but it barely kept the place cool. I would say these cottages were probably nice in 1960 and haven't been updated once since, and I really don't think that is an exaggeration. The chairs/table/stove/etc. is all very old and creaky. there is a mold smell in both the hotel and the cottages. The location can't be beat, we can come back and do naps and get right back to the park. It is a shame that they aren't trying to at least upgrade the rooms/cottages at least a little.

The park itself is ok, not great and shows a lot of sign of age. We went to the splash bash and sandy beach one day. The splash bash was the neatest thing, in our opinion, it looks nice and almost everything worked. The sandy beach was pretty nice, it was more rocky than just sand, so it hurt to walk in and was hard for our 2 year olds to make many sand castles, but they still had fun playing with everything.

The start of our day with rides/waterslides/etc. started in guest relations (where we were told was the shortest line to get our bracelets for the rides. The lady that helped us was very rude (to everyone, not just us). She finally did say that one of the smiles from on of the toddlers gave her a better attitude (Thank God--for the other guests). The rides were all ok, but again showed signs of age, like rusting and the signs were worn off, nothing that scared me while riding, but just looks like they don't care about upkeep. There is a nice selection of rides and waterslides for all ages, which is nice with our group, since the ages vary so much. Almost all the ride attendants were nice and helpful if we asked questions.

When we were here, they do a boat/jet ski/water show and that was neat, we got too hot for the entire show, but it was neat while we watched. There were also fireworks over Lake Shaefer at night, they are late though-almost 11, so we watched from our cottage. Very loud, but it didn't keep up our little ones. They do put on a nice show there.

All in all this wasn't our worst experience, but I'm not sure I'll ever come back. There are plenty of other parks that are nicer than this with better places to sleep.

The food inside the park was blah (and expensive) like most parks/zoos we've been to before. Nothing that exciting to us. We liked the pbj we brought from home the best.

Oh and the spiders, they are everywhere on rides, inside the hotels/cottages, on lights, fences, on their dead hanging plants.