FHS91 Is Right

Yesterday, after I expressed some apprehension about over-inflated expectations for CoCo Key, FHS91 said it was going to be OK. That it was awesome.

He's right.

I had a blast, and both the 5-year-old and 3-year-old are currently on the couch, about to pass out from an extraordinarily good -- but exhausting -- time. Expectations met, indeed.

First, the kid report: The 5-year-old is a bit of a scaredy cat, and avoided the big slides that run outside (more on those later). The 3-year-old was bitterly disappointed when he was turned away. But beyond those minor setbacks, they had a blast.

Probably Fun Thing #1 was the giant bucket of water that tipped over every five minutes (that's the 5-year-old ready for a soaking in the photo above. But there was a ton of fun stuff around there, including smaller slides both kids liked, water cannons that were fun on both ends, and a variety of things that go splish and splash. They had a blast there.

There was a deeper swimming pool that gave the 5-year-old a chance to work on swimming without a life jacket, and the 3-year-old had good times jumping in and swimming to the toy snake in the middle.

For the kids, it was water, slide, and water shooting and splashing everywhere. What's not to love?

Here's a look at the slides both spent a lot of time on, which were in shooting distance of one of the water cannons.



Here's a look at one of the items that dumps water on the person pulling on the rope. So simple, so much fun.



From the adult standpoint, it was a great time playing with the kids. I found the splash area far more fun than the swimming pool, but probably only because I didn't become fully engaged with the basketball hoops. That could have been ridiculously fun.

I managed to squirm away from the kids to get down one of the bigger rides. Just the thought of starting inside, sliding outside, and finishing inside is very cool to the inner child.

I took an inner tube with me. There are two tube slides and one body slide. At the top, the lifeguard told me one was darker than the other. I took the dark one. Which on a rainy afternoon means pitch black. It was very, very cool. Sign me up for more of that.

The lifeguards are all nice enough, and stick by the rules, which is a positive for parents (although not for 3-year-olds). There were about 100 people there, 150 tops, so it wasn't crowded at all, which was very nice. Or there were a lot more people there and it spreads out well. There's an A&W/Pizza Hut food stand that's a little limited, and a bar. That area looks like this (food on the right, bar in the background):



I know there's been grumbling about the cost, and at $40 a throw, it is expensive. But the place isn't designed to be a community pool where you stop by occassionally or regularly to hang out. Water Country ain't cheap, either. But I know the Connecticut one (in Waterbury) was promoting a $199 annual pass. If that happens in Fitchburg, it would be well worth the cost. I think annual passes would be a good move in terms of building up some community goodwill (although so far all signs are that they are rolling on working in and around the community), but I'm not sure where that stands.

Either way, at some point we'll be back. There's too much fun to be hand just around the corner. Just like FHS91 said.