Karst Beach — Attraction in Kentucky

This is a review specifically of Karst Beach as a public swimming area in mid-June. We're renting a cabin in Barren River Lake State Park and this is one of two options available if we wanted to swim on our vacation. The beach at the park where we're staying is not open and neither is the pool. So despite both of those things being why we chose the campsite location we did, they're not available. I was delighted to find ANY place to swim outdoors open within 40 miles of the park. Unfortunately it seems most of the swimming beaches connected to larger bodies of water are extremely prone to getting washed out and flooded. This makes sense but no one had explained it to us prior, so I'm sharing it here. We were thrilled to find a place to swim, full stop. Any place at all. That said $25 per person for access to camp features when we really just want access to the water for 2.5 hours is a pretty nice haul. The staff are not at all friendly or gracious. However if you plan ahead to arrive earlier and want to make use of the putt putt etc maybe it's a better value. As they've got us over a barrel so to speak, we're not in a position to haggle. Swimming versus no swimming all vacation, obviously swimming wins. But this specific place to swim...

If your going to this campground for the water activities based from previous trips to this facility--campers beware!!! 1-The Wibits have been completly reduced to small circle as shown in picture and they still charge you $8.00 an hour. No Wibits for 2023 2- They removed all saucers, floating fingers, etc from the free beech area. 3- Big Yellow slide closed indefinitely and is going to be taken out and not replaced. 4- Pool by original ranger station in closed until further notice. 5- Lake has not been treated and is murky brownish/green with smell that wont wash out of kids hair. Also some floating brown algae. 6-With all issues of above -2nd pool with splash pad was standing room only in pool. (weekday)

We stayed here 2020 and kids couldn't wait to come back. This is by far the worst let down of a camp trip we have ever had considering we drove 4.5 hours to get here.

We found out that this Jellystone has been bought out by an out of state...

This review is specific to the Wibit portion of the park. Understood that recent reviews note the inflatables are smaller than in previous years.... But this was our first visit so we don't have anything to compare it to. 4 of us did this and it was a blast. Even if it's maybe smaller, it's still plenty challenging, fun, and maybe a little painful due to the slipperiness. After about 45 minutes, we were exhausted. At 10 bucks a person, it's not cheap, but whatever, it's vacation! Even if you don't do the actual activity, watching kids get launched off the pillow inflatable by their parents is...