Schlitterbahn Kansas City Waterpark

Reviews 3

PA

Pat Gaule

The attractions are OK, but the place is disorganized and not run well. We went on the day before Labor Day, and its obvious that they were not anticipating a big crowd. From what I was told, Sundays are usually slower for them, but it doesnt take much business sense to realize that holiday weekends are different than a typical Sunday. Here are my biggest complaints, and all of them can be attributed to not having enough staff on hand to deal with a big crowd: 1.) The "Verruckt" is a cool water coaster, but you will be lucky to ride it once. We had to get there around 8AM (2 hours before the park opened). Getting in line for the Verruckt was chaotic. After opening the gates, you have to purchase your admission wristband (or redeem your purchased online tickets). After that, you need to go line up at the bridge "entrance". At 10AM, they open the ropes and a staff member walks the crowd back to the Verrukt to sign up for reservations. They tell you not to run or pass the staff member, but there were plenty of bratty kids and loser adults that dont respect the line and do their best to bump past you. Half of our group was among the first riders of the day and the other half got to ride at 11AM. The reservations filled up within 5 minutes of the park being open. At that point, the only option is to wait in a "standby" line that can take 2-4 hours depending on who you ask. Like somebody else said, the ride is not operated efficiently - they only send three people down every 5 minutes or so. 2.) The bars and concession stands were horribly understaffed. There was *one* person running the register at the burger place, and it took about 45 minutes to get through the line and order food, and another 20 minutes for the food to be cooked. Again, its labor day weekend...probably one of your biggest weekends of the year, and you were not at all prepared to deal with it! If I ever come back, I am just going to bring my own cooler and food because there is no way you will get served in a reasonable amount of time on a busy day. 3.) They dont enforce the "leave your tube in the water" rule. So, a ton of jackasses lug their tubes around the entire park, making it almost impossible to find one during peak hours. Other water parks do a better job of this. If youre coming out of a pool, you should just give it up because it works out better in the long run. Again, they didnt have enough staff to monitor this situation, so a bunch of selfish losers abuse the system and ruin the fun for people with common sense. 4.) The Black Knight/Wolfpack slides were probably the worst run attraction. This tower had "3 slides", and two distinct queues. One queue was for the "Black Knight" tube slide (more popular and a longer line) and the other was for the "Wolfpack" and the single-rider slide (shorter line). They had *one* staff member at the top of the tower to run all three slides. Theres absolutely no way that was safe and it also resulted in a bunch of jerks who would get in the shorter line and then cut over to the "Black Knight" line after they got to the top. Again, with nobody to monitor the lines, it was a system that was ripe for abuse. 5.) All of the slide towers were far too narrow to fit two lines with people lugging tubes up them. Not recommended for anyone who doesnt like being sandwiched in like cattle. I am giving this place two stars instead of zero because the attractions were pretty nice. THe Verruckt was worth the wait and the "storm blaster" was also a lot of fun. Maybe it would be more enjoyable to go during an "off-day", but I would never go again on a busy weekend. Too many trashy people and not enough staff is a bad combination! I will say that the staff that was present did a decent job overall. The problem is that there just wasnt enough of them. That falls on the management/ownership. They failed miserably this weekend!

AL

Alexis F

I visited on 7/19/2014 Positives: *The "lazy" rivers have tubes you can use, as do the water slides, so you dont have to pay for a tube. *Big plus, some double tubes have a seat area for children in them that are closed on the bottom, so you dont have to worry that they will lose their footing and go under. SO AWESOME!!! *There are 2 different areas where kids can play, but the wave "pool", King Kaw, and other assorted lazy rivers can be enjoyed with children because they offer the above mentioned safety tubes that have a seat for kids. *I know some reviews on here say workers are unfriendly, but before we even got into the line to enter the park, there was a worker wishing people a fun day. *It was clean * There were lots of tables, and chairs, or areas to sit. *All rides were open, and operating. * You can bring your own food and drink Negatives: *The swim up bar area, is literally IN THE KIDDIE POOL. Whos idea was that???? I went on a Saturday from open until about 3 and the bar was packed the whole time. Translation: There will be drunks next to where your children are playing. *Its kind of annoying getting into your locker... its a small walkway with lockers on both sides, so people are crowded in front of their lockers, and that area also doubles as a traffic way for people coming and going to a little eating area. So, have fun changing or taking shorts off, right next to some guys hairy arm pit, while also apologizing to people trying to go get something to eat. *Kind of a negative: this was our first time, so of course it was a little confusing finding things, but it felt like everything emptied into 1 pool-type area, which while convenient for immediate entry into another river ride, was also confusing. You can see a sign for a "Crystal River", but because everything, and I do mean everything, empties into one area, its hard to see where a ride line begins, and a ride ends. * lines for slides, and Verruckt were long. period. the whole time. no exception. It is summer, the lines are going to be long for a water ride. duh.. JUST an FYI: I paid for 2 adults and a child and it was $120 and some change, locker was $8, but you get your choice of a $2 refund, (making the locker $6), or a souvenir cup, (beverage not included.) I rated it 4/5 stars because I enjoyed my time there. I basically kept to the "lazy" rivers, and kiddie area, without eating at the park i.e. buying food, We never had to wait out of water to get in the lazy rivers, so we were never burning up or bored. If a simple, fun day for you includes watching your kids play in the kiddie areas, eating a picnic lunch, and enjoying the rivers, without slides, then youll have a great time. I felt like I got my moneys worth.

JU

Justin Pike

My girlfriend and I made a trip to KC with the plan of going to this park the first day and then seeing other parts of the city the next. We arrived on a Sunday and got into the park about an hour after it had opened, because we left later then we meant to. Anyways... FREE PARKING! The parking was free and was not a bad walk to get to the gates. Once we purchased our tickets we made our way to the check point. We had two bags, one with snacks since I had found out we could bring our own in, and the other with clothes towels exd. First thing we did in the park was we found a locker (Small $8, Large $10). We went for the large which had just enough room for our bags. Lockers work like this, you put a deposit down on the key and then can visit your locker as many times as you need! So nice since we had to put sunscreen on multiple times, didnt save us from getting burned though. Bummer. The park rides that we were able to go on were a blast. We did the torrent river quite a few times, and had a blast on rapids. We werent able to go on the slides and the blaster ride like we had hopped to. Blaster rides line was so long the end was actually by the snack bar!! That would have been somewhere around a hour or greater wait. Slide were the same. But we enjoyed the two we were able to go on so many times that we werent that disapointed. Nether of us wanted to try the boarding area, but it looked like people were having a blast on it. Also there was a new ride coming that had us both saying we wanted to come back next year to see it completed. Bathrooms were available and clean, which was a surprise to me. Since other parks we have been to usually are the opposite of this. Only negatives we had was we werent sure about these nifty little boats that were off to the side of the park. They were by the cabanas. The cabana that was before the boat dock was in use by a party so we didnt know if the dock was accessible to the public since it was not really being used, there was an employee there that was helping a man that was using one of the boats. The other was an employee(lifeguard) that seemed to be chewing everyone out on the rapids ride for little, or none existing issues. Sadly I didnt catch his name nor did I ask to speak with a manager because that would have taken my time in the park and my fun time is worth more than waiting on staff to let them know of an issue. That mans attitude and choice way of speaking to customers was the only thing that we agreed would prevent us from coming back in the future. Hope our next trip next year is as good as this one was, minus the attitude from the one bad seed.

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