Fort Rapids Indoor Waterpark

I'm giving this place 4 stars, partly because I didn't think it was nearly as bad as some of the reviews here might lead you to believe (there ARE too many negative review to convince me to stay @ the hotel!!), AND because IN SPITE of its shortcomings, it HELPED chase my mid-winter "it's tooooooo cold to do ANYTHING" blues away!!

Got a Groupon; it was a so-so savings ($49.00 for two, about a $10 savings off the $29.95 ea. charge without it). I thought it was a tiny bit cheesy that they charged us the $2.86 tax (?!?) not covered by the Groupon, but it is what it is... We expected there to be limited/overpriced food choices, so we grabbed a bite on our way over there (about 45min-hr. from Spfld.) so we just had to find the locker rooms. Ladies' room/locker room was clean (enough), but cramped/poorly designed, should have more than one machine to pay. Mr. M&P said the men's room locker machine was broken/not accepting credit cards, then proceeded to eat his cash, BOO!!! Next time (if there is one) I'd leave valuables in the car and only take in essentials, like towels and keys...

The attractions here are fine, pretty standard for older kids/adults: slides, lazy river, activity pool w/basketball hoops and some sort of lily pond rope obstacle, and a hot tub with a WELL-ENFORCED 18+ policy. The kids' attractions are GREAT (the younger me would have lost my mind here and wanted to come back every week!!) and there are plenty of attractions for babies-small/med. kids. Life guards seemed attentive, for the most part, and there was a feeling of good supervision in all areas.

Obviously, this is a special occasion kind of place, and you can't expect to leave here without spending a bundle, esp. if you eat here, which... Naaaaaaaah!! If you come here with some kind of "tropical paradise" expectations (whyyyyy?!?) you'll be disappointed, but if you want to chase away the winter doldrums and awake that inner kid hidden deeeeeeep down inside of you that's just itching to get out, give this place a shot...!!

Not bad except they charge you for everything. Early check in there's a charge. Late check out there's a charge.

The prices for the food un the patk are high. The price for rhe buffet is outrageous. You can a pizza from donatos.

The amount of chlorine I know is necessary but oh my god. My eyes were burning after a few minutes, there is no way I could stay for more than a couple of hours.

The slides are fun for kids of all ages, even the racers. If I hadn't have hurt my foot before coming it would have bedn more fun. I tweeked my foot on the racers, so I went straight to the adult only hot tub.

It is a little run down, the fridge in the room had a big rust spot. The door to the parking lot was missing the end cap for the bar to open the door. The tiny trash by the door leading to the parking lot was full and the smoking butt receptacle was laying on the ground.

Let me start by saying overall my family (16 of us - 8 adults and 8 kids ranging from 7 months to 12 years) had a great time at Fort Rapids!

Hotel Room - The kids loved our 2 Bryce Canyon Villas! They had a older feel, the bathrooms were dark and could use both extra lighting and a place to hang/place clothes, but the dryer in the room was really a nice addition after a water park day! A bigger fridge would've been nice too. The kids loved the loft bedroom!

Lobby/hallway/water park locker rooms and snack food area - were freezing, additional measures need to be built to heat in the winter. Water was cold Friday evening but felt a touch warmer Saturday. We think they were closed all week and it took a long time to warm up.

Restaurants/food- breakfast buffet was good and it was nice they offer containers to go! But The only restaurant open before 4 on Friday was the Koo Seafood buffet - very little "normal" American food was offered and we ended up having to goto McDonald's for a late lunch and ordered papa johns pizza for dinner. In addition to that there was always a long line inside the water park (in the freezing air area) and a LONG wait once you placed your order! It took a hour for the lady in front of us to get her pizza (ended up being burnt on top of it) and it took a HOUR for 2 soft pretzels that we ordered! Ridiculous! On top of that the park opened at 10am, the waterpark cafe didn't open until after 11, and they searched my bag for outside food.

Food was the worst part of Fort Rapids and why I gave it 3 stars.

The waterpark was smaller then we are used to but VERY clean and the lifeguards were amazing! They really kept a eye on the area they were in charge of and it was a awesome feeling when you have 8 kids there! It was perfect for younger children and even had a couple nice bigger slides for the adults and older kids! We enjoyed the park very much!

The arcade was fun too! They were out of tokens for some of the games which I thought was weird but all the other games were operational, new, and fun! And the ticket to decent prize ratio was better then most! 2000 tickets gave a lot of options, even 700 did!

Overall we really enjoyed our night at Fort Rapids! Just plan on going out to eat or eating in your room.

Water park is kid friendly- the property is nice on the entrance.
Our room was okay- clean but a little outdated. Biggest problem was at 1 am when people (a family) across the hall were freaking out and leaving because they stated that there were bugs all over their room. Really put a damper on our stay as we spent part of the night exploring the room to make sure we didn't have bugs too... (Thankfully nothing noticeable)
You can tell management and the owners are really trying as they are visible with staff everywhere. I hope they can get the bug problem under control as this could be a great family destination.

Fort Rapids has all the characteristics of window dressing without inventory. You walk through the front door, and the lobby is filled with a bouncy castle, a bright Christmas tree, and even a couple of hula hoop performers. That's where the ruse ends. As soon as you move into the main area of the hotel, there are immediate signs of wear, tear, and a generally sub-par cleaning crew-but I'll get back to that in a moment.

We went directly to the water park because our room wasn't available until four in the afternoon. Inside the men's locker room, there was paper taped over the credit card slot indicating that it didn't work. I walked back to the lobby, where I had to pay almost four dollars to pull out cash for the locker that I needed. Then the machine didn't take cash, either. I had to track down someone in management in order to purchase a locker rental. The entire process took nearly twenty minutes, and ended up taking half an hour after a female employee just walked right up into the locker room without warning to help another customer. I stood there for ten minutes while she walked him through it, waiting for her to leave so that I could change my clothes.

The vast majority of the employees at Fort Rapids appear to be high school or college kids who are not happy to be employed there. There was only one guard at the top of the stairs, monitoring the customer flow into at least seven water slides. The wait took forever because his coworkers downstairs weren't paying any attention to him.

After getting my kids past the miserable cold of the water being used in the main child play area, we went to the hot tub, which was off limits to kids, even if they were escorted by adults. Eventually, the chlorine was so strong that my vision became cloudy and I had to get out. I went upstairs and decided to make a cup of coffee. This is when I realized that Fort Rapids is a dive motel trying to pass as a hotel.

I went to look for the fitness room on my way upstairs, and was informed that it was "under maintenance." That was the first significant disappointment. Getting into the elevator, I noticed the dirty, worn walls in the elevator hall, and the chipping brown paint that covered its doors. I stayed on the 8th floor, and as soon as my elevator doors opened, I was greeted with the sulfur-stink of open sewer. It permeated the entire hallway, which also had dirty walls, old, musty carpets, and chipped paint. It could be possible that all of these were the result of the apparent gigantic fart that Fort Rapids had decided to trap on my floor, but who knows.

I went to get into my room, and the door didn't work-like, mechanically, not electronically. I eventually figured out that if I jimmied it up instead of down just right, it would open. The room smelled like it had been a smoking room for years, but had recently been turned into a non-smoking room. The toilet bowl was dirty, the lid to the coffee pot was missing, and when I opened the coffee maker to brew myself a hot drink, I was greeted with a used, wet, musty coffee bag. I'm pretty sure that housekeeping didn't replace our sheets, either-they looked wrinkly, like the beds had just been remade instead of given a fresh set of linen. I'm guessing they just said "to hell with it" when they pretended to clean our room before we got there.

There were two huge groups of obnoxious people on our floor at either end of the hallway. I counted at least six in each room, which I'm pretty sure is over legal capacity. Their kids ran up and down the hall, banging on peoples' doors past midnight, screaming all night long, and blowing kazoos or some instrument that produces a similar level of discontent and misery when done at two in the morning. Hotel security did nothing until I got dressed and walked downstairs in person at two-thirty in the morning in order to impress upon them just how crappy things were on floor eight because of the rooms they had over-packed, evidently with horrible parents and annoying kids.

My wife, our kids, and our in-laws woke up exhausted and miserable, having all gotten about 20 minutes of real sleep during the night.

Oh yes-and the food is insanely overpriced. Two big, stale pretzels for my kids with a little bit of cheese sauce ran me seven dollars. We fed ten at a local restaurant for about a hundred dollars. One of the patrons in the elevator with us said he fed five at the buffet for the same price. Fort Rapids is a hustle.

Fort Rapids is so shamelessly focused on making money and providing as minimal an amount of service and respect to its customers as possible, it's almost comedy. It would be, if the butt of the joke wasn't the customer. Save your money and your misery and go somewhere else next time you're in Columbus. Fort Rapids is a bad business, because it wants your money, but it doesn't want to provide you with a comparable degree of goods and services for what it charges.

One star is the minimum OTHERWISE...

Shame on Fort Rapids! Outdated--yes but that wasn't the issue.

Poor customer service. Absolutely awful! I asked to see a Manager and the young lady helping me never responded--verbally that is! Instead, she began to shift her eyes to the left. Apparently, the woman on her left (who looked RIGHT at me when I asked to see a Manager)...wait for it...WAS the Manager on Duty. Nope, she never bothered to so much as bid me good morning or ask if she could help me. But, THAT wasn't even the worst of it.

So, how about:

1. BROWN water in the sink and shower.
2. NO COVER on the HVAC unit and SMOKE when you turned it on (Cool or Heat--didn't matter--SMOKE).
3. DIRTY sheets
4. DIRTY carpet
5. MYSTERIOUS STAINS in the walls
6. FLYING insects (I managed to kill 4)
7. Doors that may or may not lock correctly
8. One light in the room that actually WORKED

I will not even start on the hotel's clientele except to say that if you value anything that resembles class--this will NOT be a crowd that you will enjoy--AT ALL!!

Yes--a truly nasty, disappointing experience. Oh...did I mention that it was so bad that I took a loss and checked into another hotel. At least I could fall asleep without my skin crawling! YUCK.

It's ok. I received a Just Pay Half certificate as a gift for one night and 4 passes for two days ($99) this is really the only reason we came.
The rooms are ok, nothing great but not dirty or uncomfortable. We stayed in the bunk bed room. The kids loved this feature.

The pool area is nice. If you wear contacts, I highly recommend removing them and wearing glasses as the heat and chlorine will cause issues.

Issues I had with the pool area:

There is only a iffy snack bar. You can't order drinks from the bar but they do have beer, pizza, nachos. The sign says no outside food or drinks :/

There are only a few lay down lounge chairs.

There is no safety when it comes to leaving with the kids. They have no ID system (like chuck e cheese does w the ultraviolet light stamp). This seems very unsafe.

If you do not stay day passes are $40!!! Wth?! That's crazy expensive considering the size of this place.

We stayed a Sunday into Monday. We were able to check in at 1. Check in was a breeze and they were able to get to the pool as soon as we got there.
Check out is at 11, however the pool doesn't open till 11 on weekdays, not thrilled with having to us the locker room instead of our hotel room if we want to stay and swim.

Also they're wifi sucks. I couldn't get it by the pool and only worked half the time in the room.

This place could be great, but unfortunately it's not quite there yet. If you decide to go check out channel 11, Pittsburgh news Just Pay Half and buy the certificate instead to make it more affordable.

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.

We stayed at Fort Rapids for one night last Saturday. After seeing the reviews on google and Yelp, I was hesitant. A few tips...we went with a group, and got a discounted rate, 89 dollars. Check in is at 4, but if you pay $35, you can check in early. Although it is a bit of a scam, I recommend it, as you can get into the water park early, and there are far less people in it.

The rooms are old. I saw pics and reviews of terrible rooms, but ours was ok. I believe that if they put some money into the place, and did a refurb of the tower...more people would go...I'm not sure I would go back, but it was ok for one night. The vending machines also were surprisingly not overpriced, $1.50 for a bottle of pop...that was nice...

This place is insanely crowded, trashy, and loud. Do not bring young children here. The first floor is one loud bar that goes on ALL NIGHT LONG. This place is filled with drunk adults letting their middle schoolers (and younger!) run around acting like little jerks all night.

Water park is so crowded that we literally could not fit in the pool. All of the slides in the kids area were closed off and on. Not enough lifeguards. It was literally miserable. No courtesy children's floatations devices, which is unsafe. No towels were available.

Customer service is non-existent. They're rude. Aside from that they acted like I was crazy for asking if a children's water park sold diapers. :/ They said... Well there's a Walmart. Thanks.

Food is severely overpriced. I have no idea why this place is so crowded.

My neighbors are currently having a drunken laugh fest in the next room, with the door to the hall open, while their rude children roam the halls...at 11pm.

STAY AWAY.


Update:: 2nd day, we were made to throw away our bottled water before going to the waterpark. Coooooolllllll.

My favorite part of the stay? That'd have to be when we saw a cockroach in the changing rooms. When we informed the life guard they calmly asked; "How big was it?". Nothing else.