Roaring Springs Water Park — Attraction in Meridian

I have been going to Roaring Springs since I was a kid, and now I’m a mom of four. I’m extremely impressed with all the newer rides that have been added and the updated areas for kids. It’s wonderful to see how the park has grown and improved over the years.

However, there are a few things I’ve noticed during recent visits that I don’t particularly like. One major issue is that many people use chairs as lockers. If you have kids in multiple age groups, you’ll find yourself moving from one area to another, like going from the wave pool to the kiddie area, to the ropes course, and then to the bigger kids’ section. Unfortunately, there’s usually no available seating for anyone, including pregnant people or those with disabilities. If you need to sit, you often end up on the hot pavement or on the stairs. But imagine all the parents crowding the stairs just to watch their kids. It’s not practical or safe.

A lot of people using the chairs as storage don’t even end up sitting in them. This wasn’t such a problem when I was growing up. There used to be grassy areas where you could almost always find a spot to relax. Now those spaces are paved over, and even though there are more chairs, they’re mostly filled with towels, bags, and other belongings instead of people. I’m not sure what the solution is, but I hope the park finds a way to address this in the future.

Another concern is the pavement, which gets incredibly hot. I was hoping by now the park would have put in surfaces that stay cooler in the sun. I highly recommend bringing water shoes and just holding them while going down rides. Little kids who can’t be carried are either miserable from the heat or risk going home with burned or blistered feet. I remember this being an issue when I was growing up, but as a mom now, I hate the idea of my kids’ feet getting burned.

Lastly, the food vendors weren’t very impressive for the prices charged. We got a pizza for $25, which is pretty typical for a theme park, but a medium soda, which they call a large, costs nearly $4 and they don’t offer refills. You have to buy a whole new drink each time, which seems unreasonable considering most of the cup is filled with ice. It also creates a lot of unnecessary waste. I highly recommend buying the Roaring Springs refillable cup and refilling it for $2. There’s really no reason a place should produce that much waste just to make a few extra dollars on drinks that probably cost them only a few cents to refill.

Overall, Roaring Springs still holds a special place in my heart, and it’s wonderful for family fun. But I do hope they consider some improvements in these areas to make the experience even better...

We arrived a little early to get some shady spots since it was going to be hot that day only to find out they let people in earlier than the "opening" time. We managed to get some good lounge chairs and they looked new as they were in the newer section of the park across from the Geyser grill. The bathroom there was clean, but something must have happened in the women's as it was closed for a few hours before we left and not sure if it opened after. We managed to hit a few rides and the lines were short at opening, but that changed after lunch. I realize they are only open during the summer, but they should limit the ticket sales per day. It felt like we were at Disneyland with the wait times. We only managed to get in about eight rides in five hours. I have to admit that they do take safety on most rides seriously and that is why there is such a wait. They could really improve at the wave pool though. I felt there was going to be a drowning there. Kids out there in the deep end without a tube and getting stuck under mine or other people's tubes. It was also very crowded in there. Constantly getting hit by someone else. The lazy river was also overcrowded and people were standing in the middle of the water. There were also a bunch of kids jumping up and hanging on the the water pipes under the bridges. The newer ride, Class 5 Canyon, uses little boards that do not hold my daughter they weighs 110 up enough. I had to use three to keep from getting any more scratches on my knees as the floor is rough. The guard told me that I could only have one board even though there were five or six just floating around by me. I gave up one, but told him I was hitting the floor with just one. He didn't seem to care much that I had scrapped my knee. Another bad thing was seeing people with open wounds in the water. I really questioned what the people had. One lady had about two dozen dots all over her belly. Might have been flea bites or something like that, but the others that have big wounds should probably not be using the place. I feel the price is way too high to justify maybe eight rides in a day and the crowd was only getting larger as after three was a deal. The meals were also high for what you get. No wonder people are trying to sneak stuff in. I doubt we will be back if during the weekdays it is that crowded, but maybe the future expansions will help. Also the ride weight restrictions made us have to breakup our group. That...

New post: WEIGHT LIMITS: Just wanted to post this here because nobody seems to have spoken about it. I called ahead beforehand and asked because we had someone in our group who weighs about 245 (most single rider rides have a 250 lbs weight limit) and they said on the phone that they could be weighed in the guest services at the beginning and wear an armband so that they wouldn’t have to be weighed all day long over and over. This was a total lie, we had them stand on the scale with guest services and they just said “yeah you should be good!” And didn’t give us any armband. So it was basically a huge waste of time. It would’ve been fine but it was just super annoying that there wasn’t a lot of communication between the staff. The girl and guy at the guest services were super kind about it though. They radioed their top manager and he just said “yeah we aren’t gonna hand out a wrist band to everyone who’s self conscious about weight”. In fact, it just seemed like the whole park lacked communication in general. One side of the park would be super picky about rules and the other would be super friendly. It’s wild to me that they had multiple scales at every slide and not just one at the beginning 😂. I also had a lifeguard tell me that they weigh you at the bottom (not true at all, you have to waste your time waiting in line to find out if you are even allowed to ride. You are also not allowed to even bring in a soda bottle from outside. No snacks or anything, however you can bring in a hydroflask or water bottle from home (cuz that makes sense lol).

Please bring water shoes or flip flops. You can wear them to and from places (and drop them off near the start of the line), most of the park is cement which can be really rough on your feet.

That all being said, the park is super fun. The slides are amazing and pretty unique. We all had fun and luckily weight wasn’t ever an issue. We never had to wait longer than 30 mins in line. We will probably come back again. Old post:

BEWARE: These people need to learn how to update the hours online clearly and well before the day of. We planned a trip months in advance and even double checked a week before to make sure the place was open all day. I guess sometime in that week they decided to completely change the hours from all day to less than half of the day starting at 4. Extremely disappointing. Thank goodness Google maps warned us beforehand and saved us the...