{"id":491,"date":"2008-12-27T18:48:04","date_gmt":"2008-12-28T00:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/famille.org\/?p=491"},"modified":"2008-12-27T18:48:04","modified_gmt":"2008-12-28T00:48:04","slug":"hanukkah-night-4-and-5-key-lime-cove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/famille.org\/?p=491","title":{"rendered":"Hanukkah Night 4 and 5 – Key Lime Cove"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I previously posted, we spent the last two nights at Key Lime Cove<\/a> in Gurnee, Illinois.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 This is an indoor water park, hotel and resort similar to waterparks in Wisconsin Dells, only closer.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve got a review of our stay, and some pictures.\u00c2\u00a0 This is going to be a somewhat long post, so click below to read it all.<\/p>\n

Check-in was easy once you got parked.\u00c2\u00a0 Arrival itself is difficult.\u00c2\u00a0 Most hotels offer a small parking area during check-in, or at least a valet and bellhop to take out your bags and move your car while you check in.\u00c2\u00a0 Not here.\u00c2\u00a0 You pull up to literally dozens of cars parked along the side of the driveway, and two overhead signs: “Passenger drop-off”, and “Through traffic”.\u00c2\u00a0 There is no indication of where to go to check in.<\/p>\n

Once inside, the place is very festive and fun.\u00c2\u00a0 On the main lobby level, there is a village of shops and activities.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 In contrast to arrival, check-in is actually quite efficient.\u00c2\u00a0 The front desk went through a huge line of new arrivals quite quickly and efficiently, and considering the large line of people, we were checked in quickly.<\/p>\n

The rooms are spacious enough, considering the price.\u00c2\u00a0 The basic room we took included two “queen” beds (hotels always lie) and a fold-out, with room for six.\u00c2\u00a0 We fit OK.<\/p>\n

First problem – the bathroom was locked when we arrived.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Long story, it’s one of those latches from the inside with an outside key.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently housekeeping thought that would be a nice joke for the arriving guests.\u00c2\u00a0 A lengthy wait for maintenance, with a family of full bladders, and it was fixed.<\/p>\n

Off we went to the water park, the whole point of our visit.\u00c2\u00a0 My initial reaction was that the park itself was a bit small for the size of the hotel.\u00c2\u00a0 We started by looking for tubes.\u00c2\u00a0 You need inner tubes to do almost anything here – half the slides, the wave pool, even the lazy river.\u00c2\u00a0 Trouble is, none of the staff knew where to find them.\u00c2\u00a0 They sent us to the four corners of the park, looking for them, but as it turns out there’s no central inner tube management facility here – you just have to grab ’em where you can find ’em.<\/p>\n

OK it wasn’t all bad.\u00c2\u00a0 Once we found tubes, we spent the first couple hours relaxing in the “lazy river” – an artificial current river that pushes you around in the tubes.\u00c2\u00a0 Their lazy river intersects the wave pool at one point, which adds a little fun to the relaxation.<\/p>\n

They also have a great “tot pool” for 3-6 year olds, with a large pool and three slides.\u00c2\u00a0 Then there are the “big slides” – five huge tubes that you can slide on your butt or use a tube to go down.\u00c2\u00a0 And there’s a large “splash” area with all kinds of water sprayers and a bucket dump.<\/p>\n

There is a jacuzzi, but during busy times there’s actually a line to get in.\u00c2\u00a0 On the plus side, that keeps it from getting too crowded.\u00c2\u00a0 On the downside, it means you actually have to wait in line to relax.<\/p>\n

The restaurants are OK but the food is overpriced and isn’t spectacular.\u00c2\u00a0 The service in both restaurants is slow, with the worst being the “DW’s” ice cream parlor & restaurant – we waited 30 minutes just for our desert, and the entire meal from appetizers to desert ended up taking a little over two hours.\u00c2\u00a0 The service didn’t improve until we complained (along with the guests sitting near us – apparently it was a widespread problem.)<\/p>\n

Overall, we had a good time, and spent most of it in the water park.\u00c2\u00a0 Pictures are HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I previously posted, we spent the last two nights at Key Lime Cove in Gurnee, Illinois.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 This is an indoor water park, hotel and resort similar to waterparks in Wisconsin Dells, only closer.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve got a review of our stay, and some pictures.\u00c2\u00a0 This is going to be a somewhat long post, so click […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kids-family"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/famille.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/famille.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/famille.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/famille.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/famille.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=491"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/famille.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":493,"href":"http:\/\/famille.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions\/493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/famille.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/famille.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/famille.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}