Zoombezi Bay — Attraction in Liberty Township

(Zero stars) - So many issues July 5, 2025, after 4PM

1. The bag check lady took googles out of my son’s bag and told us, “You can take them back to the car, leave them in the cooler section or throw them in the trash”. We didn’t want to leave them in the cooler section to get stolen especially since we didn’t have anything in the cooler section.

It’s upsetting because I looked at the rules before traveling our 3 hours to go and wouldn’t have brought them if they weren’t allowed.

My husband had to walk in the blazing heat all the way back to the car (which was 15 minutes away) to leave them. We waited for a half hour at the gate.

Once we got past that part and to the ticket line, what do we see? 5 kids with GOGGLES ON THEIR HEADS.

2. The place was packed, so we wanted to purchase zoom pass tickets and they told us they weren’t selling any. Why not?

3. The rides and food places were being shut down around 7ish, this would have been nice to know. Put that information out before we travel all that way to go. It makes no sense, seems like they would bring in so much money by staying open.

There were only 2 lines open for food and the lines were so long. You had 2 choices after 7. Pizza or Surfside grill. The pizza line had an hour long line and the grill had 2 different lines.

4. The SURFSIDE GRILL:

Ridiculously rude people. My daughter went to get a burger, she noticed no pickles on the burgers and asked for them. We could hear the guy say it would be about 10 minutes for pickles and the girl immediately turned around and said, “It’ll be an hour if you want pickles”.

My daughter then asked, “Will you please leave them tomato off”. (like they obviously did with the pickle). The girl snapped and said, “ You’ll have to do it yourself”.

She declined to take the burger and got fries only.

Then I got in line and wanted a burger with just cheese only. The girl (Rachel M) walked over to the guy making burgers, like she was going to ask about it but instead did some other things. Left me standing there for about 5 minutes and came back and said, “I’m sorry, we can’t do that, they are premade and if we did that for you, we would have to do that for everyone and we are a little busy right now”.

They were so busy that she left me standing there while she played around like it was funny. None of them were premade. We had to stand there and watch him put the toppings on. It seems it would have been much faster to just leave the other stuff off and hand over the burger with just the cheese.

They had no problem leaving pickles off earlier without even telling anyone, so what’s the difference in leaving the other stuff off, especially since they weren’t even made yet.

They don’t care about people and I feel sorry for people with allergies because they aren’t accommodating and it isn’t posted that you will not have anything to eat unless you bring your own food. Not to mention it’s $16 for an over seasoned crappy burger.

Also, while I was standing in line to order, I watched them continuously sell drink cups, knowing that they didn’t have anything to drink in their machines and no ice either. A guy told them he went to 5 different places for drinks and couldn’t find any, but they continued to sell drinks and didn’t tell the customers that they were out of drinks. Can you say theft? Selling a product that they didn’t have. Ridiculous.

5. Once we got our food, we had nowhere to eat and nothing to drink. They closed the section we were sitting in and made us move our stuff. They crammed everyone near the wave pool. We didn’t have anywhere to actually sit and eat.

6. When the movie started, they only gave out 20 floats. There were hundreds of people there, the kids couldn’t even watch the movie because they had nowhere to sit and people were splashing them and nobody would say anything to them.

This was such a horrible experience. Its disappointing because I remember that it use to be our favorite water park. We have been to many water parks and always loved this one, but it’s...

Disgusting. MASSIVE OVERCROWDING. There is nowhere CLOSE to the staff required to accommodate the DANGEROUS AMOUNT of guests they cram into this cesspool. Seriously: they have GOT to be breaking some sort of capacity to lifeguard law. CERTAINLY IN THE CHILDREN'S AREAS. The hordes of people frantically swarming in tells that there must be PLENTY of revenue generated to raise the workers' compensation. (not to mention the INSANE daily price per person) Teenagers usually LIKE working at water parks! It just shows how greedy the whole Columbus Zoo enterprise has become. TONS of rides were closed, because there weren't enough staff to monitor them. Due to an insanely more expensive "fast pass", which essentially allows people to cut the big line and continuously ride a ride multiple times....it took us close to 2 hours to wait in line just for the first ride which sat up to four, yet the people running the ride weren't calling out to ask guests in line if more riders wanted to share a tube when only 2 were riding. Only half our party got on that ride. This was due to the fact that we had one relative monitoring our 3 children (ages 4 and 6) in the "Baboon Lagoon." Which SHOULD NOT have been an issue. But THAT was the worst of all. I would bet there were around 200 people in that section. (people, not little kids) And there was ONE GUARD...Mindlessly blowing an ear piercing whistle at parents who dared to rest their bottoms on the pools edge to actually WATCH their children. (THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO PLACE TO SIT) Every. Single. Chair. is covered with one flip flop, empty sunscreen, something dumb. And almost no one is at their seat all day. Mind you this was at like 11 am right after opening. Ever think of having a few seats just open and not allowed to be hogged the whole day by one person, but left for people who might have a disability and just need a seat every once in a while? Large unruly kids and teens had migrated over to the children's Baboon Lagoon" area, infiltrating the entire platform... they were out of control. There was no guard on the actual platform area. There were NO slides open or "working" at the top part, but of course none of the big kids knew that so they were cramming past all the little kids, practically knocking both the children and parents over in a rush to find the "next best thing". Literally every slide had ropes just sloppily tied to block the opening. When I tried to tell the lifeguard about the older kids pushing the smaller ones, he shrugged his shoulders and said that "they were allowed to be up there and that there was no height restriction on that ride". I understand this for parents, however I thought it mentioned in the pamphlet that that area was geared for younger guests. At any rate this particular lifeguard was not concerned about the safety of the children being pushed but more about defending the fact that the older kids had the right to be up there and he definitely couldn't do anything about it. I saw him TRY to speak to a manager-looking girl who appeared to be no older than 20, and I watched her shrug her shoulders shake her head and just walk off. In the end I could tell that it wasn't their fault, and the park was just being managed in a ridiculously poor fashion. Whoever is in charge ultimately does not care about the safety of the guests, the stress of the workers, or weather or not a child drowns. Because IF this water park continues to be run in this fashion, no doubt an accident will most certainly happen. By noon that day, most people were leaving. We decided to try to sit down for a picnic lunch on the way out. Of course the teeny tiny picnic area...which like, can I just ask:why bother? There IS room for additional picnic areas. So yeah, the picnic area was swarmed with people & no place to sit. AND then GEESE! For some reason people are feeding geese. There are no signs to inform people NOT TO. DEAR ZOO: you have an E:coli situation in your picnic area. Please educate folks on not feeding...

Had a fun day but could have been much better. Spent the entire there so I had all day to come to my review.

Nowhere that I saw online tells you about the weight limit for rides. It just mentions height requirements. However there is a scale and people are actively weighed. If 2 people can weight 400lbs. Why can't someone weighing over 250 ride the ride being they are not above the max weight? And why not notify people of the weight limit prior to buying tickets?

Not once during my visit did I see anyone actively cleaning any of the restrooms. By the end of the day they were disgusting! 1 sink had vomit in it and others full of hair.

Sadly Baboob Lagoon had 3 slides closed and the little stepping stone area. The 2 slides that were open where on the same side of the area with a very small narrow stair well that was so crowded it was a safety hazard because it was an awful bottle neck. However the other side was wide open because those slides were closed so there was no one over there. It was just a free for all. Survival of the fittest.

Why not open 1 slide on each side to allow a better traffic flow? I did go to guest relations to voice my concern on his. Was told thank you and they'd look into it. Nothing was changed.

Someone spilled pop and there were about 15-20 bees swarming my chair area. Not fearful of the bees but didn't want all the barefoot people to get stung. I saw 3 people assuming manager type asked if some water could be dumped to clear off some of the syrup. And was told they'd try to find someone from thr grounds crew to do that. That never happened.

Swim diapers signs were posted but not actively enforced. As there were kids/babies with NO DIAPER or a regular diaper on.

The lazy river was beyond crowed with many actively swimming and walking through it even though signs were posted no horseplay, swimming or walking in the lazy river.

Lines were hour plus wait for slides only to allow people who bought extra passes to cut the line from regular entrance cost folks.

Only saw 1 person emptying trash cans and saw no one actively walking around the park to pick up/sweep the grounds.

Saw 2 women in straight up thongs with their entire butt checks exposed. Very offensive!!! Don't tell me that ANYONE on the Zoombezi staff did not see that. They just don't care.

Rented a locker and you can tell them are never cleaned. There was sunscreen on the outside of the door. The inside needed a good scrubbing. The keypad needed cleaned. For $22 days a day I'd think someone could spend a few minutes cleaning them out at the end of the day.

The dipping dot station in front of baboon lagoon has mold on the inside of the freezer you can see.

At this point with already going to guest relations and speaking to managers ( baboob lagoon slides and bees) to no avail of my concerns came to the conclusion this park focuses on just the revenue and not the satisfaction of those in the park. Simple things like lockers and restrooms that should be cleaned regularly aren't.

Rules are not enforced for the comfort of those in the park.

I hope this will show ways improvement can be made for a better experience for the many people who spend a lot of their hard earned money on a special day for their families. We are already paying way over priced food, drinks and treats for our families. It's not to much to ask for a safe clean environment...