Always a highlight of any trip, this place cannot be beat. Having gone to a fun wedding in a detroit suburb, Kalahari is not too far away as it was only 1.5 hours from the wedding site.
The drive there was a nice relaxing break. The deal we got cannot be beat. For the 5 of us (2 adults, 3 kids) it was $149.99 plus taxes.
Checkin was not as smooth as I had hoped. The line was long at about 4pm when we checked in so we waited for a while. They gave us a choice of floors and we picked one and rolled our luggage to the room. Unfortunately when we get to the room, it had a horrible smell of smoke. I called the front desk from the room to tell them and they told me somebody would meet us at the room and get us another room. We waited… and waited… and the kids complained and whined…. After 30 minutes, I just went to the front counter. Fortunately the line was not long, I went to the counter and they called and said somebody just went to the room to meet us. I told them I wasnt going back and she called the manager and they gave us another room on the basement floor.
I had never stayed on the lowest floor and I loved the room because the ceiling was super high up. The room felt more spacious as a result. We relaxed for a a few minutes and then got into our swim trunks and headed to the water park. Along the way, I made a stop at the front desk to talk to the manager about the check in experience. The kids and wife went on to the water park while I went with the manager.
The manager was great. She reviewed the situation and the notes in the computer, apologized for how it was handled and gave us some tokens to the arcade. It was a fair exchange and I appreciate her apology.
Entering the park, we decided to rent a locker to keep our nick nacks nearby. We started off light with the things closest to the door including the pool with basketball hoops and the big castle thing with the large pale on top. There were not many people there so it was nice and water is always nice and warm. We then decided to eat and got a large pizza from the hut in the middle. After eating, we split up with Tanya staying with me and the two older kiddos with the wifey. Tanya is getting bolder and so we did some of the slides she was not done before including the 4 person tube you get in and go down the slide near the roller coaster ride. She is completely full on energy and was actually excited to test her limits of fear which is new for her. Normally she shies away from anything remotely scarey. She mixed in some milder items like the hot tub and the basketball water hoops. The hot tub is fantastic for kids as it is not too hot and is an indoor/outdoor tub. I dont think she technically was allowed in the hot tub but often times is not monitored.
She probably loves the wave pool more than anything. After a couple hours, we were all exhausted. We split up to our respective locker rooms, showered up and headed back to the room. We ate a couple snacks then hit the arcade for an hour.
I am not a fan of the arcade since it is 90% gambling games and 10% actual games. We had some free tokens so we used them. The kids cashed in their tickets for cheap toys which fortunately still excite them. Then back to the room.
Everybody else fell asleep and I mapped out the next day’s events and hotels for the next day eventually I went to sleep at about 1am.
Tuesday morning came and we ate breakfast in our room. We then headed to the water park. We had to checkout and put the bags in the car. This morning I was with the 2 older kiddos and we did all the aggresive rides. We raced on the cheeta races, Hibah and I did the toilet bowl slide a couple times. We did all the slides we could and there were still not many people so we did not have to wait long. The longest wait was probably for the roller coaster water ride which was about a 20 minute wait. We spent about 4 hours until about 2pm and then decided we were all tired.
So we decided to call it a trip and we showered up, changed and headed to the car. Our original plan was to go to Cedar Point on Wednesday but we were too tired and decided we would just explore Sanduskey for another day and then just head towards Cincinnati for the next wedding.