Coco Key

For Carli's birthday this year she decided to forgo a party with friends and opted for a day at Coco Key with the family. Coco Key is an indoor water park here in Omaha.

We arranged a babysitter for Sammy (thanks Jamie!) and picked Eli up early from school. Of course, when we got there, we saw that it didn't actually open that day until 3 pm, so picking Eli up early was kind of stupid. In fact, the stupid part was that we didn't call to find out the hours in the first place... duh!

We ended up picking Sammy back up, going home for an hour and then dropping Sammy off again (thanks again to Jamie!) and heading out to Coco Key.

We got there just as they opened the doors, so for about the first hour it was pretty open. We had the run of the place and could walk right on to any of the slides. It was really really fun! (The best part is that normal tickets are $25, but we got the military discount tickets for $12! For any of you who read this who live here but aren't military, we can get you the discount tickets any time!)

The waterpark consisted of several pools, two dedicated completely to small children. One had a zero point entry and two small slides specifically for kids under 42" tall. Eli and Carli had a blast there and went down those blue slides about a hundred times! The pool was chock full of parents watching their kids. There were also four medium sized waterslides (Carli was just tall enough, so we all got to go down them), and three very tall waterslides. Carli took one look at the stairs going up that high and decided against it. There is a huge jacuzzi with a little tunnel leading outside. It was fun to go outside and see the steam rising from the water. I think the jacuzzi was definitely one of our favorite spots.

There were so many things to do I don't have room to list them. It was super fun and we will definitely go back!

I have to mention the big bucket though. In the center of the park up on top there is a huge bucket that slowly fills with water and then turns over and dumps it all out. As it starts to dump, a bell rings to warn the people down below that the deluge is coming. We made sure to be standing there a couple of times when the water came pouring down--all 200 gallons of it! It was crazy to feel that amount of water come down on your head. Whenever the bell started ringing just about everyone in the park would stop to look at the idiots standing under the water (we did it several times! =) ).


Once the park started filling up, the noise got to be kind of crazy. With hundreds of gallons of water pouring all over the place, hundreds of kids screaming and laughing, music over the loudspeaker (although it was impossible to hear any of it), people talking and laughing at the restaurant off to the side and just all the noise in general, it got really loud in there!

I was glad we got there right as it opened so we could enjoy the park without so many people. It's much nicer to sit in the jacuzzi without having people packed in there like sardines.

All in all, it was a great time! Carli and Eli loved every minute of it and Ben and I loved watching them play. It was worth every penny of the money. I can't wait until Sammy is old enough to go with us!