Serena Water Park — Attraction in Helsinki sub-region

We went to this water park with our 2 children (7&9) who are both good swimmers. We had a blast! I'd been about 30 years ago as a child and still had fond memories of it. Having read some of the reviews here, I was not convinced at all about going, particularly when I saw references to how dirty it apparently was.

It was clean, very quiet, very few queues (despite sunny warm day, but admittedly during the C19 pandemic), loads of slides, pools, etc. We swam non-stop from 11am to 7pm.

The only downside was that the showers near the sauna were cold by then time we wanted to rinse ourselves before going home. But that's not the end of the world as I'm sure everyone washes properly once they get home.

It's a place that isn't heavy on safety as is the case in some countries, like the UK or the US. It is safe, but there aren't lots of signs and additional barriers to stop people from doing silly things. It's a place where you are expected to use some common sense, not run on potentially slippery surfaces, not expect to have a green light to tell you when to get onto the slide (rather watch when the previous person comes out at the other end...), not hang over balustrades, not go under barriers, etc which you could, if you chose to and put yourself in danger. It's however not dangerous if you are a capable of being sensible!

Tip: take your own picnic.

We loved it! Our children want to...

To begin with. Serena can be a very nice place for a family. But only for a family. Aquapark is very old, dressing rooms are small, clunky, very uncomortable. Showers are in poor condition as well, sometimes they would stop working after 20 seconds of using or burn your skin with boiling water oh yea, you can't regulate water, it's either cold or warm only depends on your luck. Lockers are small and a good half of them is broken. When you leave shower, there is no sauna, sauna is on the other side. Water in aquapark is extremly cold for an aquapark. No pools to chill in, everything is filled with children, no places to chill for adults. Only 2 slides were worth waiting the 30 min queue. There is no electronic bracelet, you need to take your wallet everywhere if you want to eat something. All kinds of food and drinks is extremly overpriced, additional to that is 10+ minutes of waiting. Buttons to activate bubbles in the "Sauna pool" were broken, out of 6 only 2 of them worked. The floor is extremly bad for aquapark, super easy to fall. Some slides don't have enough water in them.

To be honest. Not having a money electronic bracelet in a place like that is a shame. Absolutely not recommending this place to anyone, unless you have a whale wallet and a big family with 10 years old kids. Estonian/Lithuanian aquaparks are smaller, but way more...

After reading the reviews from the last year, I got a very negative impression of the place. However, when we actually went there, I found no problems. We stayed there with our (7 yo) daughter for 5,5 hours, and there was plenty of different activities for all ages and tastes. The staff were, contrary to some reviews, also mostly friendly. Sure, it is easy to see that the water park was not built last year, but if you go there to have fun, this hardly matters much. We did not come across a single attraction that was out of order or would have seemed to be in an unsafe condition.

Advised by the previous reviews, we brought along quite a bit of our own snacks, and I recommend that you do the same. Also bring some waterproof slippers, because the coarse asphalt outside is rough on your footsoles. (Many of the funniest activities are outside, so you don't want to miss out on that.)

I think that some of the snack sheds should have been open (in spite of the corona situation), preferably some healthy(-ish) snacks should have been for sale, and coffee should have been sold somewhere near the pools.

I would certainly recommend a visit to any family with school-aged kids, that like swimming and find the price...