North Yorkshire Water Park is just outside of Scarborough and is a great day out, even when the British weather isn’t playing fair. There’s so much to do, great food and you can even stay on site in their camp site.
Our Visit
We visited on a very wet August day, our first challenge was to get past a fallen tree on the driveway which was soon sorted by the person in the car behind who happened to have a chainsaw in their car. I am presuming that this isn’t an everyday occurrence though.
We arrived as they were opening and while we were waiting Pip sized up the two courses and decided that she would rather do the other course to the one we had booked. As the sessions weren’t fully booked we could easily swap our booking and we ended up in the first session of the day with just 3 other people.
As we’d opted for short wetsuits and the water was reasonably warm we were fine in the water, unfortunately the air was a bit colder but not so much that we didn’t enjoy the session.
We initially chose the Warrior course but ended up doing the Wipeout course which was a lot of fun. This course has smaller drops and slides compared to the Warrior course, I definitely preferred this as adrenalin drops are not my favourite thing.
The Wipeout course has the option of jumping in to the water off the walkway or walking in from the bank.
The Aqua park sessions are an hour and include a short safety video and instructions at the beginning.
The Aqua park
The Aqua park has 3 inflatable course; Wipeout, Warrior and Splash Kingdom. Splash Kingdom is for 3-7 year olds, it’s a little bit like a bouncy castle with added water. Wipeout is the slightly tamer course with lower drops and more things to climb on whereas Warrior is slightly more adventurous with higher drops.
The minimum age for Wipeout and Warrior is 6 years and minimum height 1.2 metres (there’s a board in reception if you need to check you meet height requirements. Participants should be able to swim 50 m and there is an adult child ratio, you can check this here.
Facilities
There is a small reception which also sells most things that you will need for you day including dry robes, towels and footwear. Reception will also hold your car keys for a small fee and these are kept in a labelled envelope behind the counter.
Wetsuit hire – you are able to rent either a short or full wetsuit for your session.
There are plenty of changing rooms on site, these are individual changing cubicles.
Hot showers are located separately from the changing rooms which were very welcome in order to warm up after the lake. These are communal showers rather than individual cubicles.
There are lots of toilets, both outdoor toilets by the lake for use while you are wet and some nicer toilets inside.
Pricing
We did the wipeout course (the white and blue one) and it cost £18 each for a 50 minute session. There are optional add ons of a short wetsuit (£2) or a full wetsuit (£5), AquaGrip socks for £2.50 and a Car Key safe for £2.
Cafe
The café onsite is fabulous and well used not just by people using the waterpark but also campers from the camp site and walkers. Their menu is varied and the food excellent. We arrived just at the end of their breakfast service and decided to wait for lunch to start so that we could have pizzas which were really good.
Dogs
Dogs are welcome on site including in the cafe.
Other things to do on site
If Aqua Parks aren’t your thing then there are plenty of other activities to have a go at including zip line, paddle boarding, puzzle rooms, wakeboarding, climbing wall, kayaking, mini electric boats, pedalos, open water swimming, fishing and sailing. There is also a camp site on site and cycling and walking tracks.
We visited in August 2023 when Pip was 11.
Go everywhere, Do everything 