Saint Marys Aquatic Club — Attraction in St. Marys

We try to go to this little water park a few times a year, but it had been a while Returning with some now teenagers found that they still very much enjoy a day there. It consists of three primary areas: A lazy river ride, a water slide+lap pool, and a kids splash area. The lazy river is well maintained, and flows well. There is a large "island" area in the middle that makes a good place for parents to keep an eye on kids that linger in that area, but it is inconvenient to the other areas. There is no bridge to the island, so you have to go through knee deep water to get there. The knee-deep area is also the loading zone for the ride. This certainly makes it easy for families with small kids to load, but folks passing by on float will find it to shallow to do so simply floating on your raft. The water was clean and pleasant. One drawback of parking yourself on the island is that your kids will want interact with you, including jumping out at all points around the ride. It is against the rules to jump out anywhere but the loading area, something that was vigorously enforced by the lifeguards. The pool/slide area has a nice sized water slide that is 'dark', and takes your around at 360 degree turn a couple of times before dropping you in the pool. Kids must be 4 feet tall to ride, and suits must not have grommets or buckles that can scratch the slide (again strictly enforced). The gift shop offered some clip in plastics for grommets that worked well (.80 each). One section of the pool is designated as a lap lane, but that was not strictly enforced. The splash area for kids is clearly the showcase, with a variety of features including a giant bucket that empties at seemingly random times. The deluge can be a bit much for small kids, but the gimmick proves exciting no matter how many times they've seen one. There are a couple smaller 'bucket dumps' as well. A mini slide, ladders and squirt guns are fun as well. It is well designed, and the most popular part of the park. Even our teenagers had fun there for a few minutes without being disruptive to the little ones. All in all, the park is a good value. They have memberships, with locals getting a discount, but we live too far away for that to be practical for us. On previous trips we felt the weather rules were overly strict, and several times our day was disrupted by an order to empty the pool because of distant weather. I don't recall the previous policy, but a policy is clearly marked indicating that if you are required to be out for a continuous hour, then rain checks will be issued. On this day there was some distant thunder, and even a couple of rain showers, but the pool remained open. Perhaps the financial pressure of issuing rain checks led to a more liberal 'stay open' set of rules. People in the south are quite accustomed to storms blowing up, and largely take care of themselves when it comes to lightning. I applaud the handling of weather on this trip. This park is, I believe, about 15 years old now, and still in terrific...

I took my family of 4, for my sons birthday yesterday, June 10, 2025. Around 1 o'clock they called everyone out for lightening in the area. We waited an hour and as the clouds passed and sun came out they announced that the park would be closed the rest of that the day for severe weather. We couldn't believe our ears. My family & several others. As all of us were checking the radar and closest lightening was 31 miles away & traveling in opposite direction. It had gone from 3 miles away when they called everyone out, to 30 miles in 1 hour. Which is why we stuck around. As we were leaving the life guard said if I had my receipt we could get a raincheck to come back another day. I waited in line for my rain check to be told I missed it by 12 minutes. Again very disappointing. We drove an hour to spend my sons birthday there. And that "severe weather" never changed directions and never hit St. Marys. Most of your families there mid-week are local families with annual passes. They don't need refunds. SMAC you could afford to give the few of us there our raincheck. I could see this policy in place for holidays and Fri-Sunday, but mid week is ridiculous. I went to work today & shared my frustration & my co-workers agree with me. Which is what made me write this post.

While waiting on the weather to pass my kids went to spend money in your gift shop and customer service was sub-par. My son asked how much a water gun was, young lady at register ignored him & young lady sitting behind girl at register ate her ice cream & ignored him. I then asked and young lady at register stated to me the computer was down & she'd have to look up the price. She could have told my son this. No sooner does she tell me a person calls to reserve a cabana and she's able to do that over the phone however. My son patiently waited for her to get off the phone & she then turned & talked to ice cream girl. My son put water gun back and got nose plugs instead. I'm sure your gift shop lost his purchase of the water gun because of her sub-par customer service.

POSITIVES- park was clean, life guards were pleasant. Concession stand was very...

The facility seems to be taken care of and was fun for people of all ages, pricing is good for regular admissions and the party options they give. It could have been easily a 5 star review but a lot happened to make it difficult to do so.. Booked a party over a month in advance, never received email confirmation, called a few days before to confirm everything, was told a different price from when I originally booked. Upon arrival they were double booked, it took them 30 minutes to come up with a solution and this had my group standing around waiting by the gate unable to do anything with no communication back to us until we asked an employee what was going on… the reason I booked the party was for where we were supposed to be sitting at with a pavilion next to the kids area, and the new location with the cabanas made it hard for guests to participate in the ideal area for the age of kids we were expecting. I ordered food when we got settled (11a) for an hour later (12pm), our host came up to us when we were expecting the food to be ready and told us the food we ordered they didn’t have, so after picking something else, it took another hour(1pm) to receive our food and drinks, which didn’t all show up at the same time.. Overall would be willing to give another try but dealing with all of this, made it hard to enjoy the party from the start. The issues were taken care of behind the scenes, and were very appreciated by my family, but no manager came out to talk to us even after one was requested. Our host was nice and did everything asked and more of her, but from what i could tell there wasn’t an option to tip when paying. My family and friends had a good time and that was relieving. I do hope everyone is able to learn from this so it doesn’t happen to...