Soak City Water Park: Summer Fun For The Whole Family

My family and I were guests at Knott’s Soak City in Orange County opening weekend and it was a blast! We enjoyed riding on the slides and splashing in the pool, and especially – floating on the lazy river.

Knott’s Soak City OC is really family-friendly, with a huge, super shallow lagoon area for the Gremmies (littlest family members), a water-drenched play structure called the Toyota Beach House, and best of all: a very friendly staff and what seemed like a few hundred lifeguards on duty making sure everyone is very safe.

The tidal wave bay is a big hit with all ages – so cool to have waves in a pool!

There are a ton of great water slides, from reasonably not-so-scary high, to oh-my-goodness-you’re-not-getting-me-up-there frightening. My whole family did the Pacific Spin together, which is an amazing water ride, but the giant drop through a dark tunnel had me screaming things that definitely are not family-friendly. Suffice it to say, our hearts were all racing afterwards – and we loved it!

The lazy river is something I’ve written about before. I consider it one of the great inventions of modern life and I could float around in one for hours at a time, preferably in Palm Springs with a cocktail in my hand. (But I digress.) There’s no alcohol to be had at Knott’s Soak City, which is part of the family-friendly aspect to the park, but the lazy river is still delightful. A couple of our friends felt the lazy river was a little too slow, at which point someone pointed out it wasn’t called a “rapid river” for a reason.

Like many water parks, there are spots to grab some shade for your soon-to-be-sunburned skin, and they also have cabanas for rent at an additional fee. There are also lockers for rent and there’s a shower area for rinsing off the chlorine before heading home.

Since it was opening weekend, the lines for each slide were very short, which I can’t guarantee will be true in the dead of summer, so you might want to hurry in.

The only downside, in my opinion, is that you have to carry your innertube up to the top of each slide yourself; there’s not a pile waiting at the top for you. Other water parks, like Legoland, do that for you. It may not seem like a big deal, but for the Pacific Spin ride, the innertube is really heavy and I was winded by the time we got to the top. I only went one time and having to carry the tube back up really made me hesitate about going a second time.

Tickets at Knott’s Soak City OC are available online (and at Costco, I hear) for a discount, and if you plan to go more than twice this summer, a season pass would probably make the most sense. My whole family really enjoyed ourselves and we would definitely go back.

This is an original post by Sarah Auerswald, co-Founder of MomsLA.