My family and I hadn’t traveled together for an overnight stay since our trip to San Francisco in September and we needed a quick getaway. So we made plans to spend a full day this past weekend in Columbus with an overnight stay at the Westin downtown (booked on Priceline.com). Among the stops on our trip was the Fort Rapids Indoor Waterpark. Sure they have a onsite hotel that we could have stayed in, but after reading some nasty reviews of their accommodations, we decided to stay elsewhere. Besides, even after paying the $21.95 per person for waterpark entry after 4pm and just under $80 for the Westin, we were still saving money compared to the cheapest package I could find on the Fort Rapids website.

Due to our busy day, we didn’t actually get to Fort Rapids until around 7pm and with a 9pm closing time we didn’t have a ton of time. However, I felt that our two hours there was enough for our group. My wife took our two-year-old to the kiddie korral children’s activity area and the rascal roundup 40-foot interactive play structure. I took my twelve-year-old brother-in-law through the cowboy creek lazy river and onto all four of their water slides two times each. It seemed that most of the crowd really thinned out during the duration of our visit.

This was my first visit to one of these large scale indoor waterparks, so I don’t have much to compare it to in that regard. The water was definitely highly chlorinated and therefore seemed extremely clean. We did encounter one of the water slides in the rascal roundup was closed, but other than that all the attractions seemed to be well maintained. The air temperature is warm and the water is a nice cool temperature. We had a good time and wouldn’t hesitate to go back again when in the area on a cold winter day.