Bashful Dan

Or how I flushed the kids down the drain without being arrested. Like many parents planning a birthday celebration in Sandpoint we decided to three-peat at Triple Play Family Fun Park. This year we took it up a notch and booked a Suite at the Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites. We decided to forego Laser Tag, Bowling, Go-Karts, Miniature Golf, Bumper Boats, the Rock Climbing, and Arcade. We were in a playful mood so we decided to see if we could get into some hot water instead.

Raptor Reef Indoor Water Park. Oh yeah, baby! We got the whole enchilada. A suite at the Holiday Inn that had two queens and a third that sprouted from a couch, cable with two movie channels, refrigerator, microwave, toaster, and a dvd player. Perfect for the wife and I and three kids. Room came with five passes to the Water Park. We did not waste any time. I took the Birthday Boy and his friends down the elevator to the 2nd floor and we walked right through the huge continental breakast (free) area and into the water park via an enclosed hallway.

Here’s the details: Lost Falls is 400 feet that you do on a double or single tube. Velociraptor Votex. You drop into darkness, enter a huge bowl (every kid calls it the toilet bowl) where you spin around and around and around and then slowly enter the next portion of the tube (flushed down the drain - literally) that finally shoots you out into the water park below. Prehistoric Plunge is a 300 foot body slide and you exit near two large Raptors that overlook the Wave Pool that has 6 different wave patterns. There is AquaPlay at the other end where the kids love aiming the water cannons at their parents, tons of geysers, water toys, two 30-foot slides and there is this huge mega-bucket that dumps 300 gallons of water on everyone. The whole area is less than a foot deep so lots of little ones having a blast. Here’s the best part for Jurrasic parents - indoor and outdoor hot tubs that are about 100 degrees.

I swam with the kids, did all the slides a billion times, read a little in the lounger, and relaxed with the wife in the hot tub. We left at 10:00 pm and ate microwave pizza and popcorn while we finished off with a Disney movie in our Suite. When you live in Sandpoint, Idaho and the surrounding area it’s a cool treat to celebrate the kids birthday at Triple Play. In the past we have booked a party room and enjoyed the decorations and in-house pizza. This year we discovered how treating yourself to the Suite life can be convenient, fun, and provides some great options. Our bonus was that on the day of checkout, we were entitled to use the water park from the time it opened until noon. And we did. We had two cars with us and I can tell you that I was so reluctant to leave that I walked out at the last possible moment and drove all the way back to Sandpoint in my swim trunks.

Alex definitely had one Suite birthday celebration!