New Jersey is home to three indoor water parks. In 2023 New Jersey’s third opened up at the Showboat Resort in Atlantic City. Island Waterpark has 11 slides and more.
There’s plenty of family entertainment in the Garden State fighting for the attention of consumers. Indoor water parks are a fruitful business. There’s the North Jersey DreamWorks Water Park, which is perfect for Taylor Ham country as well as Central Jersey residents. The formerly named Big Kahuna’s — re-rebranded back to Sahara Sam’s — is great for Central and South Jersey residents. And the Island Waterpark in Atlantic City, great for South and Central Jersey and tourists alike.
Truth be told, given the locations of the three indoor water parks in New Jersey, they’re all tourist destinations to one degree or another. How does Island Waterpark measure up as we tick this third location off our to-do list in the Garden State?
About Island Waterpark at Showboat
Island Waterpark at Showboat is a 120,000 square foot indoor water park. The facility opened in 2023 at the Showboat resort. Showboat is a family-friendly smoke-free hotel in Atlantic City, N.J. The property has no casino and is home to the largest indoor arcade in the Garden State, the Lucky Snake Arcade and Sports Bar.
The water park has 11 water slides, a lazy river, a pool, a FlowRider surf simulator, an adults-only area with a swim-up bar, private cabanas, three bars beyond the swim-up bar, several eateries, two party rooms, and a sprawling water playground akin to a fortress named Slide Island.
In their marketing, it’s said that Island Waterpark is “largest indoor beachfront water park in the world.” This is kind of a weird way to describe the property, but if it works for them, kudos! It’s not a very large water park, overall.
Parking and tickets
If you’re headed into Atlantic City via car, you’re going to have to park somewhere. We parked in the parking garage at the Showboat, which of course, comes with a fee. Our particular visit to Island Waterpark was with a pretty hefty group of six adults and four junior adventurers.
The price to get into the park at the time of publication starts at $29.00 to $49.00, depending on the type of pass you get. A normal ticket, without a group rate, for full-day admission is $49.00.
We’re going to get this out in the open, the park is not worth $49.00. If you’re staying at the Showboat and are on vacation, try to get a package. The booking options will also drive your price down if you’re pairing your water park tickets with a hotel stay.
But if you’re doing this à la carte, forget it. Between a hotel stay, the buckets of money you’ll spend at the Lucky Snake arcade, parking, and so on and so forth, the water park is not a $49.00 property in our opinion. Even if you’re coming in for a day trip, $49.00 per person is excessive.
That said, we got our tickets via Groupon. The Groupon deals that we got significantly lowered the price of our tickets. With Groupon, you can get your admission prices down to as low as $28.49 on any day that’s not Saturday.
Ticket counter
Just because we got our tickets online and in advance did not mean we did not have to visit the water park reception desk. Everyone had to get their ticket bracelets from the concierge. When we got there, just before park open, it wasn’t all that crowded.
The staff were plenty helpful and even put our bracelets on — which, some of us had issues with. Okay, me. I had problems putting my junior adventurer’s bracelet on and managed to mangle it. Whatever, $hit happens, right?
Security in the park
Going down the corridor to the security checkpoint there were no less than four signs. Three of the signs leading up to security warned visitors that their refillable water bottles will have to be dumped out prior to entering (which we have a drinking water story for you later on in this review). There were also signs noting that all bags would be searched.
We got up to the security counter and the guard searched our bags. As for our water bottles? There were no issues. They did not even check them.
Entering the park
The entrance to Island Waterpark is like going through a tunnel into Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Okay, it’s not that dramatic, but it is cool and the entryway waterfall is a nice touch.
From the main entrance guests can go either left or right towards different attractions.
The shop
There’s a shop with sundries and other items that you might need or want. This is centrally located by the entrance.
Party rooms
There are two party rooms available for rent on the property.
Food options
There are a number of different in-park food options to choose from while visiting the water park. The park and property is set up like a boardwalk with eateries lining the inboard end of the building. Opposite the faux boardwalk and inboard wall is where all the attractions are.
Boardwalk Fingers & Fries
The Grill
Pizza
Ice Cream
The bars
Island Waterpark has a few bars. There’s the two-story Treehouse Bar, Surf Bar, bar within Paradise Adult Island, and swim-up bar in Paradise Adult Island. There’s really no lack of location to get libations.
Treehouse Bar
While we were visiting, the Treehouse Bar only had the lower level open. We did get a chance to pop up to the upper level of the Treehouse Bar, but when we came down the stairs back to the ground floor, there was a sandwich board sign at the entrance saying the upper area was closed.
Surf Bar
This little bar on the far left end of the park has a seating area adjacent to it. The Surf Bar is where I ended up taking an opportunity to get a little drinkie poo when I got hit with some thirst.
They’ve got their cocktail menu out on the bar as well as a line up of some of their drinks.
The drinks weren’t a steal, but they also weren’t over-the-top expensive. The normal shakedown that you get at a family entertainment venue, if you catch my drift. I ordered some green tea tasting foo foo drink. They did not have any of the whiskey drinks I asked for.
Paradise Adult Island
We didn’t spend any real time in the adults-only area. Just popped in for enough time to check it out and snap some photos. We only saw one patron in that area in the morning when the place opened up.
Lining one side of the area were cabanas and a bar. On the other end was a pool with a swim-up bar.
The Paradise Adult Island area had plenty of lounge chairs. What does the place look like at capacity? Who knows. But considering the low number of patrons visiting on a February Friday, the Paradise Adult Island seems like it’d have plenty of room for those who wish to get away.
Locker area
There’s a fairly large area where patrons can rent lockers. We did not end up using lockers, although we do often rent lockers when visiting water parks — it just makes sense. Instead of getting lockers, we found a table and set up a home base.
For valuables, we usually put wallets and phones in a Vaultz bag. The Vaultz bag allows you to lock up your stuff and tether it to something stationary. We looped the security cable through a zip-top bag and placed the Vaultz in it. The other end of the cable was secured to the leg of a stool.
So far this has been one of our main methods of securing valuables while visiting water parks. We have yet to have an issue doing this and if you’re discrete, by putting a towel over the cable to hide it, you won’t draw any attention to yourself.
In 2026, stowing valuables like this isn’t as burdensome. With tap-to-pay options, I just used my Samsung Galaxy 8 Classic watch — massive thanks to my wonderful and beautiful SILs for that — to pay for snacks, drinks, and food as needed.
Changing room and showers
The restrooms are changing room/rest room combinations. There are a couple of changing areas in the restrooms and two showers. This is an area where Island Waterpark is greatly lacking. Yes, the property is a hotel, so you might have a room. But what if you don’t?
First and foremost complaint from all guests in our party: there’s no place to put your stuff if you’re in the changing area or non-handicapped shower area. Want to get changed? Cool, jump in a changing room, but there’s no hooks, no benches, no stools, nada.
Want to shower? There were only two in the men’s room. One was segregated via a curtain and there was a soap dispenser just outside the “stall,” nothing in the stall. The handicapped shower area was much better, but there was only one. There was a place to put your stuff on a bench — still no hooks though.
This is a huge ding on the property. We thought that the DreamWorks showers were bad because there were no curtains and you had to push and hold in the faucet to keep the water going. At least there was soap and plenty of showers. Granted, we had not revisited DreamWorks in a couple of years, so they may have put shower curtains up. But having only two showers is a problem for those of you visiting for just the day and then staying for the arcade or other destinations in Atlantic City.
Water attractions
Noted, there are 11 water slides, a lazy river, kids play area, and more at the Island Waterpark. We got a chance to experience a fair amount of the attractions at this location — if not all of them.
There are three big main water slides off to one side of the park: Electric Eel, Barracuda Blaster, and Sonic Serpent. These are all fairly turbulent tube slides. Watch your weights, because they’ll check to make sure you and your tubemate won’t make the slide yell “tilt.”
On the other end of the park is the Tidal Races. Tidal Racers is a mat-racers water slide.
Slide Island, the water playground, houses four different water slides. Slide Island is also a sprawling attraction that traverses a good length of the property. It’s a deviation from the more traditional water playgrounds with big bucket dumps and the like.
The Kids Cove is where the final two water slides remain. I’m going to call balls and strikes here and counting the Kids Cove water slides — while technically correct — is a bit saccharine and insincere. When you hear “water slide,” what comes to mind? Not these kiddie attractions.
Adventure Pool
It’s always nice to have an area like the Adventure Pool. Most indoor water parks end up having pools like this and they’re almost always overfilled with people. Adventure pool was no exception to this rule.
Island Drift Lazy River
We’re suckers for lazy rivers. Any water park that does not have a lazy river is one with a black stain in our opinion. (Spoiler alert, when we visited CocoCay in the Bahamas, their water park did not have a lazy river, whop wah.)
The Island Drift was as good of a lazy river as one could have. My principal complaint with lazy rivers is that they could usually be a little deeper. That’s how lazy I am — I don’t want to have to work to keep my legs from touching bottom.
Another issue with lazy rivers is that there aren’t always enough tubes. There were plenty of tubes in this one. Whenever we were entering, we did not have to wait all but more than a minute or two before our entire party was tubed up. So kudos! There.
Wild Wave FlowRider
A few of our junior adventurers and some more stately ones got down with the FlowRider. The kids love hitting the waves and these attractions are usually very popular wherever you go.
I will say that there’s a video of one of our more mature adventure partners hitting the FlowRider and it’d be a perfect candidate for the Whitney Houston Challenge. Yeah, she took a nice face-plant digger, but was a total champion about it.
Our experience hitting Island Waterpark
This was a great outing. Noted above, there were six adults and four junior adventurers on this travel expedition. The value was already discussed, and I’m not looking to pay full price to get into this water park.
We showed up at open and closed out the park. Between everyone in our party, we did get to experience nearly everything.
The tube slides were pretty aggressive and thrilling. As far as FlowRiders go, that’s a standard par-for-course attraction.
We ended up dining at the park and the food wasn’t too bad. My younger roommate and I each got cheeseburgers and fries. Others in our party got chicken fingers or something else.
The cheeseburger was standard. Which is a win for theme park food.
One gigantic complaint and really, I don’t even know if this is legal — certainly it’s immoral — one member in our party asked for a cup of water to have with their food and they were charged for it. $2.00 and change for a lousy plastic cup of water. Showboat and Island Waterpark, you need to get your act together, that’s robbery.
To commemorate the water that’d cost you just over one Tom, we took the most artistic picture of the cup as we could.
Everyone had a great time overall. After washing up the best we could — some of us showered, some of us did not — we hit the arcade to spend a small fortune.
The only other complaint we really had and it had nothing to do with the water park proper, but with Showboat, had to do with restaurants. None of their sit down dining restaurants were open and their quick-service/fast food burger joint closed early. We ended up leaving the property and headed to the Hard Rock Cafe for a late dinner — this was Showboat’s loss for sure.
In comparison — the three indoor water parks of New Jersey
There’s hardly any contest on who’s the bull goose of indoor water parks in New Jersey. That title handedly goes to the DreamWorks water park at the American Dream Mall. But what about Island Waterpark and Sahara Sam’s (formerly Big Kahuna’s)?
A hit against both Sam’s and Island is the fact neither have a wave pool. Not only does DreamWorks have a wave pool, theirs is super aggressive.
As far as water parks go, Island Waterpark is bigger — indoors. Sahara Sam’s has a whole outdoor area that needs to be considered when looking at the properties though. Island Waterpark has more indoor attractions than Sahara Sam’s just based on the number of slide options.
Value is where the rubber is going to meet the road when comparing these two water parks. Island Waterpark offers a season pass — but it’s not for the entire year, four months, and it’s over $100.00. Sahara Sam’s, the last time we cranked out the math, you pay for your season pass or annual ticket/membership in about two visits.
As far as amenities go, Island Waterpark being located in Showboat, there’s more at your fingertips. Also, Island Waterpark is in Atlantic City, which, let’s face it, there’s a ton to do in that area. Outside of Sahara Sam’s is Diggerland and some other attractions, but there’s not a whole lot going on in that immediate area. Yeah, Sahara Sam’s is just outside of Philadelphia, but you need to ask yourself what kind of trip are you on?
Are you a Garden Stater doing a day trip or are you on vacation?
100 percent, Island Waterpark is the second place winner in this race. However I’m more likely to head to Sahara Sam’s where I have an annual pass. My recommendation is to try all three if you can.
Overall experience.
This was a positive trip and one we’re likely to do again down the line. Would it be worth it to pair a hotel room and water park tickets? Yes. There seems to be some good deals there. If you’re a Jersey person looking to do an overnighter, this could be an affordable option if you play your cards right. They do allow dogs for an additional $100.00 per dog up to two, if you’re a dog person.
There’s plenty to do in the area and since the property is located towards the end of the boardwalk before bending around towards the Absecon Inlet and the aquarium, it’s not in an awful location. Would I recommend walking to the other end? Probably not, but it’s a doable feat.
Island Waterpark at Showboat is located at: 801 Boardwalk, Atlantic City, NJ 08401
