I actually don't think the park is nearly as bad as most people are saying. Do keep in mind that this isn't Disney or Universal or Seaworld moving assets into a water park but a brand new company still figuring things out with themselves and the market around them. It ain't perfect, hell it ain't even that great, but it isn't poor at what it's trying to do. Look at Wet n' Wild in it's first few years, it was pretty shabby too.
That said, after going a number of times I've gathered quite a few bad first impressions I feel I should warn others about:
- Single riders is still a huge oversight. There are no single rider queues and no place to add them later either. A fourth tower with primarily body slides would fix this issue real quick. Honestly I think straight up copy and pasting Royal Caribbean's slide tower from CocoCay would be perfect. Of course that's definitely not gonna happen, but we'll see what they actually do in regards to expansion.
- The wristband needs a hook. Why should I care about these points, what do they really give me? I've been more than a couple times so far and there have been too many problems with tap stations not working or my pictures not sending/sending me a different family's photo. It's kinda a mess and I hope they stabilize it as soon as possible.
- The lazy river needs more than one entrance/exit. Oh my god how did they miss this? Isn't part of the point of the lazy river to give guests a way to quickly get through the park? So much for that. Guess you'll have to walk, speaking of which....
- Every path in the whole park makes you feel like you're going the long way around. Which is strange because the footprint of the park isn't large at all. I'll use Wet n' Wild as a comparison, because despite being about the same size it always felt like you were less than a minute away from anything in the park, while this somehow...doesn't?? I'm not even sure how they did it but everything feels so long and winding.
- One more problem with the paths. In this park, the traditional water jets that other parks keep at foot level to make sure people don't burn their barefoot feet on the pavement have been substituted with lawn sprinklers that tend to shoot up into your face rather than at your feet most of the time. Not only is the thought of spraying what looks like reclaimed water at guests really gross, I also just find myself walking in the hot dry pavement when they're on because I can't stand being pelted in the face with water while just trying to get from point A to point B.
- Similar problem with Lazy river, but the center island with Sports Court and the Pelican's Paradise water playground needs more than one entrance as well. I've seen so many people asking where to enter it because you can see Pelican's Paradise from everywhere in the park, but you can't enter unless you go through a really tight off center sidewalk. It's really just not good design work and I don't think there is a good way to fix it.
- The name "Island H20 Live!" is such a mouthful. It is so dreadful to say and doesn't even match the barebones social media theme. The theme is also trying too hard imo but it isn't anything a few new signs can't fix.
Again, willing to be optimistic about the future of this park. But they have a lot of soul searching to do to really get a system that works like it should. If they wanna settle for the FunSpot of water parks, lower that price level and keep doing what you're doing. But if they truly want to replace 2016 WnW as the local's water park of choice they need some better quality slides and some better quality of life additions.