Big Kahuna's Water & Adventure Park — Attraction in Destin

I've been going since I was 7 (the 90s). The new owners who bought it after 2020 completely ruined it. It used to be way more affordable (esp for locals) and better run.

The new owners slapped paint on SOME of the slides to make them look newer (which honestly was needed) but no other actual updates/fixes to make the park actually updated, nicer and worth the increase in prices. A bunch of their fun slides are always closed bc it seems like they don't want to hire the number of lifeguards needed to run them all. Their season is only from April to September, so any work/updates on the part or slides should be completed during their long off season, which is Oct-March.

My kids are super disappointed bc we used to go every summer. I'm upset bc prices for food/cups/refills and entry all went up, and it seems like they "can't afford" to pay a full staff to run all slides? My mom surprised the kids with passes this summer before we knew how bad it had gotten. Never again wasting $ on this water park.

One of the best slides that use a mat to slide down, used to have a ton of mats, you and your family/friends would grab a mat off the rack where all the mats would be hanging and you'd walk up the steps and that's where the line would be, but they took away almost 20+ mats and limited it down to 8! (6 when we went last weekend). While you wait in line (now at the bottom of the slide) for 3-4 people to get a mat, watch them walk all the way down to the steps, watch them walk up, slide down, THEN hand the next people their mats. It's ridiculous and runs a lot slower for no reason. If mats were outdated and needed to be replaced, why haven't they been in the last 3yrs? This ride is too popular to limit 6-8 riders at a time.

The other fun slide we love (2 slides-single or double tube riders) only ever has 1 slide open causing the line to get super long. They also hardly have any 2 seater tubes, let alone ones that are fully inflated (you can typically choose to ride w/someone or single). So- limit 2 slides down to 1 AND only give single tubess to people... the line is ridiculous.

It's just not worth it. I know this was a lot, but I figured I'd let it be known. Don't get me started on the disgusting bathrooms and one of the kitchens located at the back of the park, isnt even opened (causing huge crowds and long wait times at the 3 upper level food counters all close together). It really just doesn't make sense. They seem so greedy and just trying to bank on people who don't know better (tourists). Save your money 😓

-Old season pass used to be $65(ish) -New season pass is now $175 💀🚫 -Old single day ticket used to be $45 -New day pass is $62.91🤦🏼‍♀️ (Universal Volcano Bay is $80 for single day)

Parking Season Pass-$25, Daily Parking-$5 In the past, we'd pay $5 or show our pass when entering the parking lot at the parking boxes. Now, we have the $25 parking pass, but no one knows...there aren't people at the parking lot boxes and we never got a pass to hang in our car. It was added to one of our season passes. Sooo I'm not sure how they know if we've paid/have a parking pass?

Reg. Locker Rentals now $18 XL Locker Rental now $20 (Lockers do at least last you the day)

It's just not worth spending so much with slides closed and food prices almost $20 for chicken tenders or burgers and fries. The souvenir cup is $20 and $3.50 for refills (used to be free refills). But the cups are the least of my worries. The lack of attention the new owners have spent on the park itself after increasing prices so much back in 2020, is very disappointing. There is really no reason the bathrooms should be as bad as they are, no reason slides should be closed, no reason maintenance and updates should not be completed within the off season months so the regular season months are enjoyable and worth purchasing tickets to go enjoy ALL slides/attractions while there. Open the back kitchen to disburse the crowds at the front of the park next to the locker rentals. It just seems like they are cutting corners to...

This review comes from my visit to Big Kahuna's a week ago with my 6 year old son, my friend and her family (a party of 15).

We arrived at Big Kahuna's around 11am. It was scorching hot!! By the time we arrived at the gate, we were all dripping with sweat. The experience at the gate was okay, it seemed rushed. It looked like teenagers were the associates and they seemed to just rush everyone through. I've had a more thorough search of my bags a the movie theater.

Once we got inside the gate, we became overwhelmed. There wasn't any signs or instructions or anything to let us know anything. We were standing there trying to figure out where we were or where we wanted to go first. We ended up walking around and finding the lockers. My experience with the lockers was pleasant. You scan the code, pay for the locker on your phone with your card and create a passcode. The others in my party had a hard time where one's card wasn't working and the other couldn't put in her code. She had to find an employee to help her which they were extremely helpful.

We started to walk around to see which ride we wanted to go to first. We chose the slide that requires the tube but we were unsure of how to retrieve a tube. after asking around, we were told that we had to go to the lazy pool and wait around for someone to get out and leave theirs. It took us forever for all of us to get one. There needs to be a better system for that in my opinion. But i will say the lazy river was my favorite!

The slides were fun. My 6 year old really enjoyed himself! It made me smile seeing him having so much fun. He is usually afraid of water but once I put his life jacket on, he went on every slide that he could. This park is heaven for little kiddos.

There are 2 cons that I have. The first one is the walking. The setup of the park creates a sort of hill to where you have to walk up a lot of steps to get to all of the rides. That is where most of our energy went towards.

The number 1 con i have and is the main reason we left the park earlier than when we intended was the food! I was extremely disappointed about the so called food court. There seems to be hundreds, maybe a thousand of people at the park with only 1 place to get food. By the time we were hungry, we walked to the food place and saw that there were about 30 people standing in the line. If i had to guess, the wait time to order would've been an hour easily and the wait time to get your food at least 30 mins minimum. We decided not to get food there and just play some more until we physically had to leave. About 2 hours later we decided to leave due to some of us having headaches from not eating. I urge you guys to open up more food places because before I visited, i read the reviews and that was the main concern from everyone.

Sad to say, I will not be back to your park just off that fact alone. I understand this is a smaller park compared to others but to have that many people there and 1 food spot is ridiculous to me. Before we visited we had breakfast and due to all the walking, we used so much energy that eating a few hours later was expected. A real disappointment.

• Tip: Do not buy your parking in advance. Wear water shoes! Eat breakfast before going. Bring bottled water with you, they let you...

We bought tickets using Xplor!e because the first ticket was suppose to be FREE but in reality they charged $30 for processing fees. When we got to counter girls didn’t know how to do the checkout with this app, we had to stand to the side and call and 800 number to figure it out, with 4 kiddos who were eager to get in the water because it was so hot out!!! This should be a common app, our resort gave us the info. But it’s kind of a rip off with all the added fees!

This place is NOT great for anyone who has trouble using stairs! There are SOOO MANY stairs you have to climb & all uphill. We carried our 2 year old the whole time! Not to mention the ground was extremely hot & we all burnt our feet! Our toddler would scream And cry if we set him down because of the pavement. You NEED water shoes, but you can’t wear them on some slides!! 🤦🏻‍♀️

-side note they need water sprinklers all over for the hot pavement!!! They have very few!!

A few slides you can’t wear hats or glasses. Which is understandable but my sun glasses are prescription glasses so I wasn’t going to take them off and then have to walk all the way back up the stairs “blind” to get them.

Also this place is very spread out and it was difficult to send my kids to a slide and the end of the slide is so far away and very difficult to get to! There’s no easy way around the place!

The baby area with the blue concrete slides and plastic slides entering the zero depth water the ground is very slippery and my two older boys fell and I slipped, luckily I wasn’t holding my baby! The plastic slide get very hot and you need to slaps water up on them before letting your baby go down.

In the pirate ship area no adults can go down slides. So not meant for 2-3 year olds or younger that need help.

Some slides were shut down & some workers were texting instead of telling kids when to go down the slide.

My husbands first slide he went on was the concrete river and the first little drop he bruised his tailbone very badly. The lifeguard made and ouch face and said ya you have to keep your butt up… would have been good to know before going. Also the slide you get stuck on all the way down and my kids were told if you do tell the lifeguards along the way. After my 9 year old was stuck and COULD NOT move he yelled up to the lifeguard “I’m stuck” and she shrugged her shoulders and never stood up or helped him(Not Acceptable), I understand eventually he would have moved but in the meantime his two siblings were far ahead of him And that freaked him out!

As everyone else has reviewed prices are outrage! They were out of big pizzas and our only option was flat bread. It’s a tiny 4 piece pizza 6-8 inches for $14!!!! We got two for our family of 6 because we were starving and spent over $30 when we could have gotten a full size (but they were out) Not worth it at all!! So disappointed.

On multiple occasions I said if we could get a refund we would leave now. But I knew we wouldn’t be able to and I didn’t want to have anymore...