KeyLime cove at a glance
Size of water park: 65,000 square feet
Size of arcade: 8,000 square feet
Accommodations: 414 rooms and suites
Unique features: Cashless system throughout resort
Day passes: Not available
If you’ve ever driven from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, you’ll have seen Jean, Nev., a border town offering Vegas-style entertainment, but with a shorter drive. For stir-crazy Chicago families, the new, Floridian-themed, $135-million water park called KeyLime Cove, which sits provocatively and conveniently next to Interstate Highway 94 and opposite the Gurnee Mills shopping mall in Gurnee, will likely have a similar pull.
Sure, much Wisconsin Dells fun awaits at all-weather, mega-splash joints like the Kalahari, the Great Wolf Lodge or the Chula Vista Resort, but you still have to pay your tolls and drive about 200 miles.
Why not jump straight in the water instead of sucking down fumes on the torturous tarmac of the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway?
Our family (me, wife Gillian, almost-5-year-old Peter and 3-year-old Evan) hit the water at KeyLime Cove, which opened with about 400 rooms at the end of February, on its first weekend of operation. After a pleasant 45-minute drive, we found an upscale, resort-like destination with a pleasing ambience, a beautiful water park, a staff of exceptionally warm and friendly people and a number of systems that weren’t yet working properly. And we also stared down a new kind of parental horror — a high-tech, cash-free environment wherein our tech-savvy 4-year-old, Peter, could potentially wave his wrist at a token dispenser and hit the arcade all he liked.
Whether you’re 4 or 44, you’ll drop a chunk of change at KeyLime Cove. If you’re after a low-cost weekend, this ain’t your joint. Convenience has its price. We paid $299 for a “Queen Grand” stateroom (basically a large standard hotel room with two beds), which was the lowest available rate when I booked about 30 days in advance. Rates are lower on weeknights, and one fellow guest told me that he’d saved 15 percent by joining the resort’s free online club and then making his reservation after receiving a promotional e-mail. Smart man. Other less smart individuals had paid an absurd $20 premium for a room with a balcony that overlooked either I-94 or a big field of mud (exterior landscaping at KeyLime Cove is a work in progress).
The rate includes water-park admission (for four, in a standard room). You get more people in if you stay in one of the tempting suites (some with hot tubs), but they cost at least $150 per night more on a weekend night.
My problems began with the reservation. After dutifully and nocturnally entering my details at keylimecove.com (if you’re doing this on work time, beware the computerized Polynesian tunes that will loudly broadcast your sins), the Web site froze, leaving me in one of those painful limbos where you don’t know if your card has been charged or not. A human being sorted things out the following morning. She said the site had been having trouble.
So did the front desk. One of KeyLime Cove’s selling points — and it’s an impressive asset — is that it operates entirely on a wristband system. Clever “RFID” electronics reside in your wristband. One wave and your room opens! One wave and you’ve bought an ice cream! One wave and you’ve charged everyone’s dinner! One wave and you have one heck of a bill!
At a place where you’re mostly not wearing any clothes, the removal of any necessity for sticky dollars in the swimsuit is a serious boon but it makes check-in a much longer process involving complex explanations. Long lines snaked through the lobby on the Saturday afternoon of our arrival. After arriving around 2 p.m., we waited about half-an-hour — not fun at the best of times and really not fun with excited kids in tow.
We waited to find out that our room wasn’t available. If you dig through the Web site, you’ll see that check-in is officially at 4 p.m. (even though check-out is at 11 a.m.).
You can enter the water park, though, as early as 1 p.m. (and you can stay the whole day after you check out, either by checking your bags or using the smallish lockers for a gym-type bag). But between 2 and 3 p.m. that Saturday afternoon, most people were waiting around, hoping to snag their room. That was understandable. You want to be able to get changed in comfort, especially if you’re paying this kind of money. You can get your all-important wristbands early — but although you can flash them to the human guarding the water park, the vexing problem there is that they don’t get activated electronically until you get the room. And thus you float around the resort like a citizen with few rights.
But it’s a nice place to float around. The intensely themed main lobby is fashioned like an old street in the Keys — fake clapboard hiding retail outlets, a faux gas station and a spot for a band to knock out the kind of tunes that go well with margaritas. We tried (and failed) to charge some ice creams. “You’re not yet in the system, sir,” said the delightful server, as I pulled out my cash.
I got back in line. And waited. At 4 p.m., we were in. Aside from the muddy views, the rooms are fresh and cheery. They feature flat-screen TVs and (to my delight) a Keurig pod coffeemaker. Unfortunately, though, you have the drag the heavy machine into the bathroom if you want to find an outlet to actually fire it up. But by then, the boys were already practicing waving their wristbands at the door — and chomping to get to the water.
At 65,000 square feet, the KeyLime water emporium is considerably smaller than the Dells megaparks, some of which are double that size and contain more sophisticated slides. But it is a beautifully designed park with unusually large amounts of natural light.
Among many attributes that experienced aquatic fun veterans will notice are an extensive little kids’ area that comes with its own gate (for parents to better relax). There is the ubiquitous lazy river — but this one flows through the wave pool, adding a little excitement.
Along with the usual slides that burrow like worms through the resort’s exterior walls is a terrific thriller called Hurricane’s Vortex. You travel down a steep tube and find yourself deposited in a huge bowl. After a few slow spins, you’re sucked down a hole .
Attentive lifeguards were everywhere. And although the resort was sold out on our visit, the guest-only policy ensures that the park doesn’t feel crowded.
Compared with our visit last summer to the water area of the Olympus Theme Park in the Dells, this was like escaping into a private airline lounge during a meltdown at O’Hare. Everything was open. Everything was fun.
The Dells parks are better for thrill-seeking teenagers. But for the under-12 set, KeyLime Cove has all you need. And the slides and pool are packaged in an atypically pleasant environment for adults.
When we ventured out for dinner, more problems began. There was an hour wait at the main restaurant, the Crazy Toucan, which doesn’t take reservations. So we headed downstairs to D.J. Anderson’s, the resort’s more casual joint — themed like an old-fashioned soda parlor. We waited another half hour — even though loads of tables were empty.
Mercifully, KeyLime Cove has smartly arranged some resort-like entertainment. When we caught sight of a precocious, Miley Cyrus-like karaoke artist, we thought of another use for the lifeguards’ rescue hooks.
But we loved the old-fashioned table magician who captivated our hungry boys.
“Are you always here?” I said to the magician. “I haven’t got the job yet,” he confided, sotto voce. “I’m auditioning.”
Once the menu arrived, we were horrified to see most of the decent stuff had the words “Coming Soon” slapped across it. To be happy, you pretty much had to love deep-fried chicken tenders. So that’s what we ate. We’d all nearly fallen asleep by the time it arrived.
But we woke up as we passed the arcade — which features the very latest and very costly machines. Our sneaky boys tried to wave their bands at the token machine, but I’d taken care of that (at the front desk, you can either deny your kids charging privileges or pre-load their bands with set amounts).
I doled out the tokens and we spent about $20 to get about 50 cents’ worth of toys. In other words, it was a perfect family hour. And the staffers dispensing the climactic plastic crap seemed to understand that the experience was more important than the number of tickets you needed for a wriggle worm.
After a good night’s sleep, we bought breakfast at the patisserie-type joint in the lobby. Dubbed Island Temptations, this quick-serve outlet had the best food in the place, including fresh baked goods and excellent coffee. And then we tried to figure out the morning.
With check-out at that irritating 11a.m., you’d kill for noon because that would allow you to get up, eat breakfast, spend a couple of hours in the park, shower and make your deadline.
But 11 a.m. is tough. In the end, we checked out at 9 a.m., changed into our swimwear and checked our bags with the bellman.
The park was even more pleasant than the night before, even if our slide-loving 4-year-old found to his chagrin that height minimums were being more seriously enforced.
Three out of the four of us slipped while we were in the park — at one point on Sunday, everyone was pulled out of the water after another patron hit the deck and needed medical attention from the lifeguards. Such are the realities of people encountering water, but this one could use better floor traction. Not to mention a few clocks and house phones.
After we got back, I called the resort and asked about some of the issues we’d found. Spokesperson Michelle Hoffman said that the resort was working on improving all aspects of the guest experience, including improving the check-in speed — an issue caused, she said, by the need to educate guests on how to use those high-tech wristbands.
As for all those “Coming Soon” stickers on the menus, she said that the park “hopes to have the menus complete by spring break.” And she said that the 11-4 checkout spread is “standard in the water park industry” and pointed out that guests can rent $5 lockers inside the park.
Before we headed home on Sunday, we tried to have lunch at the Crazy Toucan. There was no wait this time, but the dreaded “Coming Soon” was slapped on almost everything. Except, of course, the chicken tenders. We all got up and walked out. We headed instead back into the water park and snagged a cheese pizza.
It was delicious. I even felt a bit like I was in Florida. We’d dropped around $550 for our one-night getaway. But we didn’t burn much gas.
The boys didn’t want to leave, but I had a 4 p.m. show to review in downtown Chicago. Be thankful, I told them. If we’d been in the Dells, we’d have had to leave right after breakfast.
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Cjones5@tribune.com
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KeyLime Cove
1700 Nations Dr., Gurnee; 877-360-0403; www.keylimecove.com
Distance from downtown Chicago: 40 miles
Opened: February 2008
Size of water park: 65,000 square feet
Size of arcade: 8,000 square feet
Unique park features: Cashless system and magic, music and live entertainment throughout the resort; family art-and-craft area.
Accommodations: 414 rooms and suites in a variety of configurations
Packages: Typical packages include the Stay and Play Package (includes pizza, sodas and 160 arcade tokens) for about $50 on top of standard room rates and the Paradise Bed & Breakfast, which includes a $40 breakfast credit for an additional $30 per night.
Day passes: Not available
Dining options: Resort-like collection of eateries, including Crazy Toucan grill, D.W. Anderson old-fashioned diner, and various pizza, sandwich, beverage and dessert outlets.
