Wild Rivers Waterpark — Attraction in Irvine

Great place to take the crew or just the two of you! There's lots to do from the wave pool, kid area that's cool enough for adults (my favorite area) a bunch of slides from baby slides to huge group slides! You can slide by yourself, with a friend or a whole group depending on which slide you choose.

My favorite thing to do was the lazy river ride! You just grab a tube and start floating. The current will move you around and you can go around as many times as you want. You don't even need a tube you can just float. I could have done that for hours.

When the wave pool gets going the waves get pretty crazy and it's a lot of fun. It turned out to be the kids favorite thing!

There's a 42", 48", 54" (inch) height requirement to go on the slides. I recommend getting water shoes (although some slides don't let you wear them) or flip flops for going from ride to ride.

You aren't allowed to bring food or coolers in the park. They do a minor bag check and will turn you away (back to your car) if you have a cooler. However, they allow you to re-enter and even have a picnic area by the parking lot for ppl who want to bring their own food. I have dietary restrictions so we choose to bring a cooler and eat in the car. You will have to wait in line to get scanned back in but you can by-pass the bag check if you leave your bag in a locker or just at a chair in the park. There lots of chairs to sit in or leave your stuff at but put your valuables in a locker. There's also cabanas you can rent and they do birthdays!

If you choose to eat in the park you will pay more for it (like anywhere). For hot food they have chicken tenders and fries, pizza. They sell whole pizzas I think they were about $30, single slice was $7.25, I think? They had a chicken caesar salad I think it was about $12. Uncrustables, yogurt parfait and some other snacks were about $7.25 a piece. This is all in the cafeteria area in the back of the park. The food is cafeteria quality in my opinion. There were more options than I listed but not much more. I opted for my homemade sandwich.

One place that is absolutely worth the money is the white dessert shack! The pineapple dole whip was so good I could have eaten 2 in a row even tho they were $6.25 they were worth it! They also had mango dole whip and vanilla, chocolate, or swirl soft serve. The sundaes where definitely impressive too. I can't see any kid or adult not wanting one of those! They also had churros. There was a dippin dots stand ($7.25), 40 below Joe which is Dippin dots but coffee, yes coffe. They had a bar, beer garden, free refillable water and ice stations. Changing rooms, showers and a small shop. The shop mostly had Roxy brand stuff in it. I got a super cute sea turtle ring for $20. They had flip flops, goggles, waterproof phone cases for $20-$30. I highly suggest getting one from Amazon before you go. You will want to video!!!

There really wasn't any souvenirs or anything like that to buy. They had a towel and one plain white shirt that said Wild Rivers. Also you will want to add you card to your wristband if given the chance at check out. It's much more convenient as it's a cashless business. We got our tickets on groupon so we didnt have the option to load our card at checkout. You might be able to do it at the park as well. You will be asked to return your wristband as you leave.

As far as parking is concerned it's $20 ($5 cheaper) if you buy parking a head of time of their website. We got there early before they opened and there was no line to get in but about 15 mins later the line was down the street. They had 2 rows of disability parking Maybe 20 spots by where we parked. There might be more on the other side as well. If you brought your own food want to eat at the picnic area you'll want to drive to the far side of the parking lot. The right side if you're facing the building. To the right of the entrance. They do ask that ppl limit their picnic time to 30 mins if ppl are waiting and it's the same inside the park. There's a large table and bench area outside...

June 2, 2024 visit. Gold season pass holder. 5 great, and unfortunately, 5 terrible experiences. I didn’t want to post this, but my last experience below convinced me to write. It’s the start of the season, so hopefully WR reads this and takes immediate action to fix.

Great experiences: Lots of parking once you get in Excellent rides Lots of seats Water not too cold (70-72) Lifeguards are attentive

Terrible experiences: WR is great once you get in, but that’s after getting through the completely inexperienced employees WR has overwhelmingly hired - AND failed to properly train in customer service - to run everything from parking entry to customer service. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve all had our first jobs, but for nearly 100% of the front line staff to be inexperienced and management to be passive is quite a shocking experience for an operation this size.

It took 45 mins to get passed the parking lot attendants (4 of them)! I told the supervisor (1 of 4 attendants) it would be great to have 2 lanes so parking pass holders don’t have to wait behind those paying for day parking, and he said he told management and they don’t listen to him and walked away! No apologies or sympathy for wasting 45 mins out of only 5 hours left of park being open.

I had to get a replacement wristband for my son, and the customer service attendant gave my 10 year old an adult size bracelet. Seeing the employee was really young and nervous, I gently pointed to 175mm bracelets behind him and asked for one of those, and that’s when in front of my two kids he clenched his fist, closed his eyes and took a deep breath like he’s trying to stop himself from attacking us, and with anger said “I TOLD YOU THIS JS THE SMALLEST!” Shocking! Of course I asked for his supervisor, who was equally untrained, didn’t acknowledge or apologize for his staff’s improper behavior and just stood above him and told him which keys to press.

In the park I saw “WRGuest” WiFi pop up on my watch, so asked a server for password. She asked her manager over walkie-talkie, and manager said we don’t have guest WiFi! I showed the server the “WRGuest” WiF on my Apple Watch, and she said she’ll go ask a supervisor but never returned.

At the end when leaving the park, I decided to just give my feedback to another manager, so I asked an attendant “May I speak with your manager?” and she said “What’s wrong”. I asked “Are you a manager?” And she said “No. What’s wrong?” And I reiterate I need to talk to a manager, who she finally pointed to, and happened to be standing just 5 feet to her left all along, watching everything unfold. So basically I had to prove to another inexperienced attendant why I needed to speak with a manager! The best I could simplify and explain to the manager was that if Disneyland customer service is 10/10, they were at a 1/10. The manager understood that analogy, finally acknowledged that the attendant was being aggressive (because he was standing next to her all of the time).

Summary: WR is built well, but managed by an extremely passive and weak HR departments that owners are either unaware of or ignoring or perfectly content with since this is a seasonal business and there is no other competition around. I can’t imagine the owners would ever want to offer a sub-par experience like this especially to local residents who are pass holders though, so I hope the latter reason is not correct.

Recommendations to park visitors: Lower your expectations for customer service to a 1/10, give yourself 1 hour to park, 30-120 mins if first time checking in as a season pass holder, 30-120 mins for any additional times you need to wait in customer service line, and just go to cafeteria to grab food so you don’t have to rely on the servers.

My family is season pass holders so we’ll keep going since there are no water parks like this in OC, but will remain hopeful and add 2-3 extra hours to our prep time I guess. Hopefully management reads this review and does something about all the...

Wild Rivers is merely OK, a far cry from Disney’s excellent water parks Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach, and exactly what I’ve come to expect from an Irvine Great Park development. It was disappointing, and I doubt I’ll go back.

Pros Fairly close to home Easy parking The food was OK, quick to get, and not ridiculously expensive. The cashless wrist band worked. No smoking Reasonably clean The lazy river was OK but a little too shallow especially because there weren’t enough tubes.

Cons Most of our day was spent standing in line on stairs waiting. Fleeting moments of fun were separated by long expanses of waiting. Time is wasted waiting for folks to totally clear the landing area and by not utilizing all available slides and ride spots. According to the web site, “Wild Rivers will control the attendance level in the park to ensure that our guests have a great experience.” Nope. I realize we were there on the last Friday before school started for many, but having now read this statement I’m even more annoyed. We paid $69 each plus parking and locker, arrived before opening at 10, and had enough by 3. Both the absolute value (rides in 5 hours) and relative value (vs. Disney’s water parks and other theme parks) are not great. The park was overrun by middle-school-age kids who were part of summer camps (with about a 15:1 supervision ratio) or simply dumped by their irresponsible parents. Many were making loud, annoying noises, spitting, bumping into or brushing against people, etc. According to the web site, “It is up to the parents discretion if they choose to allow their children to attend without an adult.” That’s just ridiculous especially with what’s been happening at Knott’s Berry Farm. Biting flies were a painful annoyance on one end of the park, especially because of the waiting. Yellow jackets swarmed around the trash cans on the other end. The web site is clunky, especially on a phone. There are no map signs or indications of what the rides are like, which is annoying especially with the aforementioned clunky web site. The posted signs are just those to limit liability, spouting off a list of restrictions that nobody reads. The lines for several rides split somewhere on the stairs with no indication of which line one would want to be in. One ride had a very long line to get its special raft, then a special line for that ride alongside another line for four other slides, which then split again. I guess this is fine for folks with a season pass who come all the time. There are few body slides; most require some kind of a float. This was the lamest wave pool I’ve ever been to. Our family just stood there while an overcrowd of folks in tubes bobbed around. A true wave pool is huge, deep, more like the ocean, and runs for longer. Parts of the park are unfinished, e.g. the cement wall pictured and the landscaping. There is no unifying theme, cool merchandise, etc. This water park and the amphitheater stand as a “could have done so much better” testament to the missed opportunities in developing the Irvine Great Park. It is clearly evident, standing in line halfway up the stairs for the water slides, that this park was just thrown together on what used to be a runway. The smell of landscape mulch is quite strong, due to the nearby presence of large piles. There are also heaps of discarded plastic plant containers just outside the fence. One of our chairs was broken (see picture,) the chairs were low, and we didn’t see any lounge chairs; some folks were just laying out on the concrete. I got sore feet from the hot concrete despite being conditioned by my own pool deck and regular running. Many people wear some kind of shoes, which results in annoying piles of shoes near the lazy river...