Surprisingly, guests are allowed to bring in their own coolers and food - a wonderful and very family-friendly benefit.
Lockers were available for rent for $5 ($10 refundable deposit) and there were food and drinks available for purchase. The park was filled with what seemed like hundreds of comfortable white loungers, arranged in various locations that allowed for different degrees of privacy, shade, or accessibility to the water features. Splashtown also had a splash pad for the little ones, a wading pool that maxed out at 3 feet for slightly older kids and new swimmers, several other pools, and a huge climbing structure for kids with small slides and tubes, sprinklers, water guns, and an enormous pirate bucket that dumped water over everyone every few minutes. My older kids, who are fearless, LOVED it.
Guests, riding on 2- or 4-person floats, descend quickly through a system of tubes before being shot out into a truly enormous funnel, where they rocket up one side and then the other (screaming the whole time), before floating out the bottom of the funnel through another tube and out into the final pool. It has lots of tube rides - an easy one for wimpy people like me (it took a lot of courage for me to try it the first time!) and several that are more challenging, including the incredible Tornado ride which must be seen to be believed. What a fantastic amusement park! Splashtown, an excellent water park, makes up one side of the park. The highlight of our weekend was spending all day Saturday at Funtown Splashtown USA, which is located right on Route 1 in Saco, just a few miles from Old Orchard Beach and about 30 minutes north of Portsmouth NH (about 1.5 hours from Lowell - not a bad drive at all!). We continued on up to Ogunquit where we waded in the surf despite the gray skies and cool weather, and then up to Wells to enjoy the best seafood chowder ever at The Maine Diner (and yet more fried haddock for the kids - double score!). It was really a stop for me, to check out all the kitchen gadgets and sauces, but the kids ended up fascinated by the beautiful store and are now devoted fans of the jelly sample table. We kept the food theme going by stopped at the Stonewall Kitchen company store in York. Major triumph with my 6-year-old, who is super-picky. We took a chance and ordered fried haddock to share, hoping the kids would like this new form of fish sticks and - score! - they all devoured it. What a great store if you enjoy outdoor sports, with three floors of gear for camping, fishing, hiking, hunting, canoeing, and more! There was so much to look at that we could have stayed all day, but we tore ourselves away to eat a hearty lunch at The Weathervane. Although we've been shopping in Kittery several times, this was the first time we stopped at the Kittery Trading Post. On Friday, we meandered up the coast on Route 1 from Kittery to South Portland, with several stops along the way. We’ve been in Maine on day trips and for short vacations before the kids were born but this was the first time the kids visited southern Maine, and they loved it! It’s only 90 minutes away, and there are so many unique and interesting things to see and do. Our family of five took a long weekend break to Maine at the end of June to celebrate the end of school and my daughter’s 9th birthday.