The day we were supposed to leave for Beech Bend, the boys were playing in the back yard and happened upon a yellow jacket's nest. Michael, Conor and Patrick were all stung and immediately swelled up. We had to put off our trip yet again. But, we finally made it happen the next day.
We arrived at Beech Bend close to when it opened on a Sunday. We tried out one ride in the park, but decided that the rides were not for us. It is an older park and the rides didn't seem to work that great.
It is a very small park and is very easily walkable. We headed over to the water park portion and parked our stuff at the large children's play area. The lazy river circles the whole water park and the boys had fun floating and swimming.
Peyton had a blast going down all of the slides
Peyton really loves splash parks and he had a blast on this one
There is also a small pool with a lily pad challenge. This was one of Patrick's favorite parts. It's actually a little challenging since the lily pads move all around. Patrick did great, but Peyton struggled with it. He just wasn't quite big enough yet. Honestly, this pool sort of grossed Michael and I out a little bit. It didn't seem like the most clean water and there were TONS of babies in this pool. Although I should mention that I found someone checking the water quality a couple of times at this pool while we were there.
Michael and I ended up splitting up a bunch during the day. Patrick and Peyton had vastly different interests in this park and it made it difficult to hang out all together. Patrick loved the lily pad challenge and the big wave pool. Both the pools that Patrick loved were a little too challenging for the little two, so Michael stayed with Peyton and Conor in the splash structure. Peyton also really loved the large slides, which Patrick was too nervous to go down.
The wave pool made me extremely nervous. Every 15 minutes the massive waves would start. I really had to be vigilant about keeping my eye on Patrick. By late afternoon there were so many large rafts in the wave pool that Patrick was almost caught under a few with the huge waves. It meant that I had to constantly wade out to the middle. The parts of the park that Patrick loved were also the only parts of the park that had no shade whatsoever. So, although we constantly applied sunscreen we both got extremely sunburned. My shoulders are still bothering me a week later.
We reunited for a little while at the end
I should also mention that although the food isn't terrible, I definitely would not recommend it. It is very reasonably priced, but did not taste that great. You are also not allowed to bring in your own food. There is really only one place to get food in the water park area and the service is absolutely horrible. I was the second in line and it took me over 35 minutes to get my food. They had about 15 teenagers helping with the food, but they would stop and have a 7 minute conversation while serving you. Every single time the waitress forgot what I ordered and had to come back in between each item. It seemed as though it was happening to everyone else as well.
Although we had a really great time, I do not think we will be revisiting Beech Bend. The differences between Holiday World and this park were very noticeable. While Beech Bend is a much smaller park, it just didn't compare to Holiday World. The lifeguards were much more vigilant at Holiday World, the food is much better and the park seems much more well maintained. Holiday World is much farther away, but we had a much better experience there (aside from losing Peyton last year, of course!).
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