Well, it's been a while since I've visited a new-for-me park to review, and whilst I don't usually veer into the world of water parks I figured I'd make a special exception for Siam Park in Tenerife. Heralded by many (including Trip Advisor) as the best water park in the world, Siam Park which opened in 2008 is the top attraction in Tenerife. The water park boasts world class water slides, outstanding theming and landscaping and gorgeous beaches and animal enclosures. It's also easily the most hyped attraction I've ever visited - the minute I mentioned I was going my mentions were flooded with people telling me how incredible the place was, eager to hear my thoughts. So I guess I will get stuck in then!
Before I start I want to caveat this by saying that this will be a true to life, play by play of how our day went at Siam Park. I always do my best to be as up front about our experiences as I possibly can, and despite us receiving gifted tickets for this attraction our day wasn't the smoothest (as you will shortly see) and therefore I want to start off with getting to the crux of it: I don't think Siam Park is the best water park in the world. After reading on I'm sure you'll understand why but I wanted to put that out there first and foremost. So here we go.
It should be said that I am not the world's biggest water park fan, but I do love a fantastic bit of immersive theming and a good water slide where you sit in a boat of some description. I also usually do my best to avoid hype as best I can for any new-for-me attraction before visiting, but with Siam Park it was impossible. Literally everybody told me it was incredible and I was going to love it. Everybody. Which I completely get but I always worry it's going to set the benchmark to an unattainable place but yes, suffice to say the hype was real and I was excited to see what all the fuss was about!
Given the island was dead everywhere else, the park opened at 10AM and we arrived around 10.20AM to a HUGE queue of people, much to our surprise. There was no signage explaining which queue was for what, just various lines of people excited to enjoy a day of water slides and one poor park employee desperately trying to direct traffic so nobody got mowed down. And this was our first issue - I had to pick my tickets up but without much signage or direction it was impossible to know where to go. After about 20 minutes of running around, heading in and out of offices, being fobbed off by two different park employees who seemed way too stressed at 10.30AM in the morning and eventually being told to cut in front of a family to speak to a staff member at a kiosk (apologies again, family of Paultons Park fans decked head to toe in Tornado Springs gear), we had our tickets and we were in.
Once inside things still didn't move smoothly, sadly. The crowding was uncomfortable, especially given Covid-19. We were packed like sardines into a bottleneck hardly moving for seemingly no reason, until we turned a corner and realised it was because the park were insisting on everybody having obligatory photos at the entrance before being allowed into the park proper. After the chaos of entering the park this was particularly frustrating but we shrugged it off and focussed on our next task: lockers.
Now this isn't my first rodeo, I've been to many a theme and water park in my day and the golden rule is always to head to the back of the park first, right? So after consulting the map and locating some lockers more towards the other end of the park, we smugly passed through yet another crowd to seek them out. Once we got there we were a bit peeved to find these lockers were closed, despite the park being quite crowded at this point and all other locker locations now boasting huge queues. How annoying. We bit the bullet and just joined the next locker queue we could find which actually moved really quickly once we were in it, the long queues were kind of deceptive if I'm honest.
But we were in, stuff safely locked away, in our swimming gear ready to do an attraction. As the Mai Thai River was right there we decided to calm down a bit with this first, only to be told no we could only enter at another location the other side of the park. Oh, and we would have to wear a face mask. Yes, all day. Yes, in the water. Yes, on the slides. I'm not sure how Siam Park have gotten to the conclusion that this is the correct approach but from my perspective and experience this seems futile and dangerous - the one slide I did wear the mask on I almost choked on the water splashed in my face.
So on we fought, wandering around to try and find the entrance to said lazy river. We got close, only to be told by a stern security guard that the park is one way, and if we wanted to reach the entrance point literally 5m away from us we would have to backtrack around the entire park. Suffice to say I was more than frustrated at this point. It had been just over an hour and twenty minutes since we'd arrived at Siam Park and we hadn't dipped as much a toe in some water, let alone been on any rides.
In our frustration we gave up on the lazy river and joined the queue for the first slide we could see, the Jungle Snakes. Pretty standard tube slides that slither down the park's terrain. We waited about fifteen minutes and had a great time - this was a really fun water slide! Right next door was The Dragon, one of my must-do attractions, and glancing at the queue we decided to see about purchasing a FastPass, priced at a very reasonable €15 per person. I had enquired about buying these when collecting our tickets, but was told we could only buy these inside, so we joined another deceptively fast-moving locker queue only to be told FastPass was now sold out for the day (despite a-frames remaining up advertising FastPass around the park all day).
And I'm sure at this point you can understand how we were feeling. Exhausted, frustrated, angry, let-down. We just wanted to get in and have a good day, but it seemed the chaos and disorganisation of the place was set against us, and all the previous delays we'd experienced had now led to us not even being able to buy FastPass to try and make up for lost time. So annoying.
Regardless, we sucked it up and accepted our fate of a day of non-stop queueing ahead of us and joined the 45 min long queue for The Dragon. It was very slow moving but actually quite pleasant in the shade of the trees. The slide itself is absolutely brilliant - it's a ProSlide Tornado with a HUGE (20m wide) funnel including a gigantic themed dragon peering down at you as you slosh back and forth. Absolutely worth every minute of queueing and I wish we'd had time to go around again.
I believe at this point we did manage to find the entrance to the Mai Thai River (did I mention it's the world's longest lazy river?) where we were each assigned a rubber ring and enjoyed a peaceful float downstream. I do wish there was a little more movement to this one, there were times when we came to a standstill and it was a bit of a pain in the bum to keep pushing ourselves along. The highlight here is of course the diversion at the end which leads to an absolutely insane slide/rapids thing, complete with airtime and jumps, ending in an underwater tunnel through an aquarium. Another really excellent attraction and an example of where Siam Park really shines through with world class attractions.
Next up was a ride on the Mekong Rapids - a ProSlide Mammoth 4 person family raft ride river rapids ride. Controversially I'm going to say this was my favourite slide in the park. It was fast, it was wild, it had amazing steep drops with loads of airtime and just the right about of splashing. Like everything at this park, it's beautifully landscaped and the final drop splashes down into a pool surrounded with onlookers, so the atmosphere is quite fun hearing everybody cheering and clapping as you splash down.
By this point it was about 2PM and we were starting to get hungry, so we followed an a-frame sign promising hotdogs and burgers. We walked for about ten minutes before we realised we'd done a huge loop on ourselves and were back where we started. On a normal day this would just be a minor, silly inconvenience but after the day we'd been having and the hanger setting in I wasn't best amused. It was also around this time that I became very aware of my feet, and how they'd started throbbing. There are signs all over the park advertising wet shoes for €10 - not because the ground is hot from the sun but because it's been designed in such a way that the indentations (which I'm assuming are for anti-slip purposes) eventually become agony to walk on if you don't have something on your feet. Conor has flip flops so was fine but I'd gone barefoot (which I'd foolishly assumed would be fine in a water park!) Sigh.
To distract ourselves we joined the queue for Singha. Now, I knew this park had a Water Coaster somewhere but I'm nowhere near as on top of my water slides as I am my coasters so I didn't know which was which. Until we sat down on the thing and got going. The near misses through the trees! The huge ejector airtime! The crazy drops! Absolutely insane Water Coaster and easily one of the best I've ridden - another absolutely knockout attraction continuing the trend of there not being a bad or poor slide in the park.
At 3.30PM, Kinnarree was next up - another ProSlide special, this time a four-person Tornado24 amalgamated with a Tornado Wave. I've never done one of these 'half-pipe' type elements on a water slide before so it was fantastic to finally be able to experience one for myself. Very exhilarating and a little bit scary to be near-vertical like that in nought by a rubber dinghy. Kinnarree was probably my favourite themed/landscaped coaster - I just loved how all of the elements popped out amongst the lush tropical planting around it. Gorgeous.
That was the last slide of the day for me as we were approaching 5PM, but Conor wanted to make Tower of Power his last of the day so up he went as I waited at the bottom with the other spectators. Visually Tower of Power is beautiful, with stunning Thai temple theming all around and the main slide plunging through a shark tank (containing some of the most horrific looking sharks I've ever seen - I'm not usually scared of such things but these were vile!) This ProSlide Freefall is 90ft tall, making it a fair whack shorter than Summit Plummet at Blizzard Beach, and I've ridden that so I saw no harm in skipping this one. Conor loved it though and said he preferred it to the aforementioned Disney similar, although he did mention you're going too fast through the shark tank to realise what's even happening, let alone take in the view!
With the final slide of the day done, we went back around to the entrance to collect Conor's flip flops, only to find they had been stolen. A fitting end to a generally frustrating day at the world's best water park then!
Siam Park is absolutely beautiful. It's a gorgeous park that's stunning to look at, with excellent theming, lush tropical landscaping and thrilling, world-class slides. Seriously, every single slide is excellent. What let this park down for me was the frustrating operation - because of the faff at the start of the day leading to us not being able to purchase FastPass, we literally did not stop all day. We didn't have any downtime to enjoy the beach or the wave pool, to sit down with a drink in the Thai village and pause to enjoy the scenery or watch the sea lions for a bit. We queued back to back, all day, and even then without stopping there were still at least three major attractions we did not experience, let alone being able to reride our favourites of those we did ride.
So yes, a frustrating and stressful day punctuated with some excellent, world-beating water slides amongst stunning scenery, but frustrating and stressful nonetheless. If we were to go back I would do the following differently:
- Arrive before opening to ensure we get in with ease
- Dump things at first locker we find instead of trying to find a quieter one
- Purchase FastPass at the first opportunity
- Bring FLIP FLOPS (but not expensive ones in case they get stolen haha)
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I truly believe you shouldn't have to plan a day out at an attraction with military precision nor purchase FastPass to be able to have an enjoyable time, and sadly this did feel like the case with Siam Park. I'm sure during periods where it's not extremely busy the place is absolutely incredible, and I'm very jealous of those who've enjoyed it in this state. Fantastic water park? Absolutely! Best in the world? Not in my opinion.
I'd like to thank Siam Park for gifting us tickets to enjoy a day out at their attraction, we're so grateful!
Have you been to Siam Park? What was your favourite slide? Let me know in the comments, I'd love to have a chat!
Talk later xoxo,
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