Sandcastle Waterpark

As a family of four, two parents and two children under 10, we visited the Sandcastle on 31st August 2020 after reading on their website that they 'operate on a significantly reduced capacity to ensure that social distancing can take place in all areas of our building and throughout the Waterpark'.

After being advised to wear masks upon entry to the reception area (this was not enforced by staff), we entered the poolside.

Upon entry, it was instantly clear that the pool was at near full capacity and staff were not enforcing the 3 hour swim times. Loudspeaker announcements were inaudible and unintelligible, and so swimmers were clearly leaving at their allotted time,and lifeguards and staff were not asking anyone to finish their swim and exit.

We arrived at 3pm and the pool, already extremely crowded, kept getting busier. It was impossible to social-distance safely between swimmers due to the sheer amount of people in the water.

There were painted 2m markers for ride queues, but where these hadn't rubbed off, people were not obeying them.

We left after two hours, an hour earlier than allowed. We felt misled by the veneer of social-distancing measures on the website and reception area, and would not have ever booked if we had known how overcrowded it was beforehand.

This is clearly an instance of profits before safety,and the managers of the waterpark should be ashamed of the misinformation and mismanagement of Sandcastle during a pandemic.

Suffice to say, we won't be back.

I visited with my partner, 8 year old and 10 year old. We expected it to be busy so we booked an early slot at 9.30 with the hopes we would be able to get on some slides and enjoy the pool before it got absolutely packed. What we didn’t expect was for the slots to over lap, as the time went on more and more people arrived until it got to the point we could hardly move, you literally couldn’t even move a limb without it touching someone else.

The queues for the slides became horrendous, having to stand around for over half an hour just to go on one.

I can’t see how it can possibly be safe to have that many people in there. I found all the signs advising you to stay at least a meter apart amusing as this was impossible.

I found the life guards to be incredibly aggressive, especially the bald one overlooking the wave pool. I saw one little boy drift with his life jacket on a few inches past the sign and the lifeguard screamed at him with the most horrible look on his face, scared the life out of this poor child.

I’m disappointed I paid over £80 for a visit as it is no way worth it with how many people they pack in. We ended up leaving an hour early as it was very stressful.

A brilliant day out of all ages. I was a bit sceptical after reading reviews (booked tickets then decided to look at reviews).
Easy booking system online. Great, friendly staff on arrival.
Given an electronic key for our lockers, (small £4 deposit, £3 back on return of handing them in) which can also be used to top up money to spend on the cafe inside so you can leave wallets in locker. You can go back and forth to the lockers from the pool however next time i will wear flip flops to and from.
The actual water park is brilliant. My 10 & 13 year old had a fantastic 3 hours. Only once were they made to come and sit out for 5 to have a drink then they were straight back in. Other than that not once did they come to me at the cafe.
I did half an hour or so. Went on some of the big slides had a swim. Felt like a teenager again. The big slides are fantastic!
You can sit in the cafe dressed or in swimwear.
The only downside is the cafe is ‘table service’. I sat waiting for 15 minutes not to be served. I then went up to the cashier. Only to be told it’s table service and she’ll take my order at the table. Someone slowly followed me over. Wrote on a scrap piece of paper what I wanted. To then hand that to me and I was instructed to take it to the cashier to pay. I went back and another lady couldn’t understand what was written so i had to tell them anyway what I wanted. I then paid and sat back down and waited a further 15 minutes for 3 bottles of soft drink and a coffee.
This does need to be tweaked a bit. If we ordered food it would have been over an hour from ordering and receiving, which in fairness is a big chunk of the 3 hours in there. They do need more attentive staff in the cafe and a different ordering method.
It was clean, organised and a comfortable place to spend a few hours.
We will definitely be going again!

I have visited before, though have not been for some time; the biggest plus during this visit is that all the slides are included in the admission price. During previous visits, these have been at extra charge. However, I did feel that the admission for two adults, a teen and a five year old - £81 with locker - was expensive for what is actually available.

The park was extremely busy, to the point at times you couldn’t swim more than a metre or so in any direction without bumping into another swimmer, and the water was very concentrated with chemicals which caused sore eyes in myself and my daughter.

My five year old enjoyed himself, though I’d be unlikely to bring him again due to the cost and availability of slides suitable for him.

The biggest compliment I can give this place however was to the water safety team. When ever the waves were on, the lifeguards positioned themselves around the wave pool at close intervals (maybe six of them), with an additional lifeguard in the pool itself, reminding parents of non swimmers to ensure they didn’t pass the dedicated point. This was reassuring and led to feeling safe within the pool.

Entry to the pool was quick and easy, and all staff were friendly and professional.

Cleanliness was as expected - a bit shabby in places but mainly due to the carelessness of other guests than a lack of attention to detail.

Overall, a little disappointed. I have had better experiences here than I did this time. It ultimately boils down to value for money, which I sadly don’t feel is there for a few hours swimming.

Great place to go with the family. We went with a party of seven, four adults and three kids. All kids were 8 and over. The park is slightly on the expensive side with the additional slide fees and spa fees but it’s worth it. All of us throughly enjoyed ourselves. We got there for 10am, paid in and put a tenner on a wrist band for a few snacks and drinks saving the messing around going to and from the lockers. We stayed for three hours and all of us got on all the rides which had about 5 minute queues for each one. The adults took it in turns to use the spa which was really nice (peaceful and abit of time for ourselves 😀)
Overall perfect activity loved it!!!!

Fantastic visit to the sandcastle today. We took our 2 and a half year old, who absolutely loved it. Her dad also had a fab time on the bigger slides. Lots of different things to do- different features spraying, lazy river, waves and slides: 3 hours was plenty of time and we felt it was well worth the money. Customer service was also great and managed to resolve a booking problem quickly (which was entirely our mistake).
The only fault (why we’ve given 4 stars) was the food service was organised in a really bizarre way, which was a bit of a pain with a young child. The staff in the cafe were lovely though and really helpful too. All in all- a solid 4 stars from us.

Overall very overpriced for what it is. We booked online and had a 3 hour tome slot which we didn't end up staying as it was far too busy. There were plenty of lockers and changing rooms but once in the pool area there were far too many people and signs all over about social distancing which is impossible. Food in the cafe is also expensive, we ended up walking over to the wetherspoons over the road. The only reason I give it 3 stars is because the children in our group really enjoyed themselves which was the main aim but not enjoyable for the adults.

Me and my partner decided this was a must visit on our trip to Blackpool. You need to book online (which is the way mostly nowadays), its the only way you can go, you cant book over the phone and you defo cant just turn up on the day expecting to go, so no spare of the moment trip there. We went on August bank holiday weekend and it was fully booked by the time we went, it mainly was everyday, there facebook page does regular updates. It was £61 for us both, this was for the spa as well which is a optional extra of £10 for two people. You get 3 hour sessions for everything, we booked for 11-2. When we turned up we got asked if we wanted to do flexi cash which basically means you pay for money to be put on your wristband so you don’t have to go back and get your card or phone when you use the cafe, we also paid a couple of quid for the locker, this is refundable on your exit though, along with any cash you don’t spend when inside. We had our swimwear under our clothes so we quickly entered the waterpark. The problems we had with the place was there idea of full capacity was just too high, there was way too many people allowed in on timeslots, and this affects your visit, you need to queue to get a inflatable to ride the slides then you need to queue for the slides, we thought surely there could be a better system for the inflatables, like they give you it just before you go down the slide, so you don’t need to carry it up and queue twice. The queues where big, they did go down fairly quick, though theres no chance you could ride all 18 slides in 3 hours let alone all of them more than that. We had a incident on one slide where we come out of one of our inflatables, it was a two person inflatable (think it was the aztec one) , but this was just one of them things where we hit a side while going down, not any fault of the waterpark really, we managed to get down to the bottom without it luckily. We only got to go on 3 slides, one we went on twice, it was the longest one, we really enjoyed that one. The spa was ok for ten pound, nothing amazing but decent enough, few rooms, foot spa and heat loungers. If we had to weigh up our whole experience then we would not rate this place very high, a bit disappointed really, might be better at quieter time of the year though.

A large family get together from Australia Derbyshire and Blackpool. There was enough to keep everyone busy no matter the age we spent over 4 hours here. It felt safe the 11 year olds going off on their own has they can swim but knowing they was all under one roof. Definitely going to be back again

Great water park with lots of fun areas for families and kids. Changing rooms are clean and plenty of lockers. The only down fall would be the 30min time a lot for each new group, this caused immense over crowding in the water park and made it impossible to social distance, with more people in every 30mins with 3hr time slots per person, you can imagine how crowded it had become if everyone was staying the full 3hrs. We arrived at 10.10am and by the time it hit 11am it was jam packed.