55,000 Sq Feet and 84 Degrees of Pure Fun: Coco Keys Indoor Waterpark

We had a chance to get away from a spring break weekend break this past week down at the Mount Laurel CoCoKeys Water Resort.   If you’re a parent of a toddler through elementary school aged child, you should really know about CoCo Keys.

It’s located right off the NJ Turnpike at the Mt Laurel Marriott (attached on the same property).  Most times you can book a “Water Package” stay at the Marriott for $200 or so that includes one night and water park passes for the entire family for *both* the day of arrival and the day of departure — two full days of water park fun.  The park is open from 10am to 10pm most days, so you’ll have plenty of water time.

Here’s what the seating area inside the water park area looks like:

But wait, there’s more!  On the second floor over part of the facility . . .

There’s a pirate ship wading pool for toddlers!  See that pirate ship sail? It’s a projection screen tv that plays continuous movies and kids tv programming.

The “main” water park area is really made of a large water play structure.  If you’ve been to Hershey Park or Sesame Place in PA, it’s basically the same concept — but indoors in a climate controlled setting where it’s basically 84 degrees year round.

There are 2 tiny water slides (left side yellow) for small ones.  And there’s a orange and blue slide (right side) for older toddlers.  To the far right is a lazy river that has both single and double inflatable tubes.  If you get tire of the lazy river, there’s another pool with basketball hoops all round where you can swim around with the little ones as they try to grab some basketballs and shoot.

To the far left rear, there’s a indoor-outdoor hot-tub pool which is restricted to 18 and over – they do come around and kids the little ones out periodically.  There’s also a water lily pad obstacle and in the far back of this main play structure above there’s 3 water slides that’s several stories high (4 stories? a LOT of stairs is all I can say).  There’s a regular tube and a completely dark tube.  And there’s also a single rider body slide (no tube, just you jetting down inside the slide).

While they do sell day passes for the park at $22 and $32 per day (weekday / weekend), if you stay at the Marriott, it is physically attached.  I don’t recommend staying on the bottom floor — which *is* the closet the park, but basically you’re in a walk-out basement setting and ALL the hotel traffic going back and forth to the park goes down that hallway.

They are going through a renovation of the property.  We’ve stayed in rooms before and after and were pleasantly surprised this time.  Here’s some photos of the guest rooms at the Marriott Lt Laurel:

On the desk, next to the flatscreen tv is a neat little media box:

You’ll notice the various connection options available so you can hook up your laptop, portable DVD player, iPod, etc to the flat screen TV.  Here’s a close-up shot of the connections for the techies reading this post:

There’s an outdoor pool, but I don’t know who would use it, unless you didn’t have a Water Package stay:

And the hotel gym on the 1st floor is small, but adequate:

And ah-yes, there’s a decent arcade if your kids get bored of the water.  We usually venture across the street to Bob Evans for a meal after coming out of the water in the evening, come back and hit the arcade for a bit before ending the day.  Overall, it’s a nice little getaway for families with little ones.  There’s a competitor indoor water park just minutes away — Sahara Sam’s.  It’s not quite the same — there’s not hotel connected to it, so it’s more of a day-park local scenario and the facility is not as nice.  (Local hotels do have similar “stay and play packages” like the Mt Laurel Westin, Alot hotel, etc).

Coco Keys is no Great Wolf Resort, which our family prefers (larger, nicer, better themed experience) — but two days at the indoor water park is a nice little break for the kids, especially when the weather isn’t showing any immediate signs of letting us all outside to play anytime soon.

QUESTION: Have you *every* been to an indoor water park?  Which one and what was your experience like?

Tags: coco keys, kids, mt laurel, nj, parenting, vacation, waterpark