Is it us, or has children's entertainment gotten incredibly sophisticated? It doesn't seem all that long ago that a red plastic pail and a shovel were all a kid needed to have a day at the beach, so to speak.
Not anymore. Most kids' spots nowadays are so over-the-top fun that the adults are asking if they can tag along. Take, for example, the new CoCo Key Water Resort at Newark's Cherry Valley Lodge.
It's a 50,000-square-foot tropically themed indoor waterpark with cool island digs where you feel as if you could run into Jimmy Buffet himself. The entire place is packed with bright red, orange and blue things to climb up, float down and splash in, and nothing is small scale. There's the Dip-in Theater, a shallow pool area where guests can hang out and watch movies on the theater-size projection screen above. Or the Shark's Slam, which — at 299 feet — is the largest of the three waterslides at CoCo Key.
When it's time for a break, the park has five rentable cabanas with TVs, refrigerators and private butler service, or you can set up camp at some of the waterside tables and chairs, which are scattered both indoors and outside on the sundeck. It's fine to bring a lunch, but good luck getting the kids to miss the giant Pizza Hut sign — the franchise is one of the three poolside restaurants and full-service bars. After you dry off, check out the arcade, and, more importantly, its prize wall, stocked with cool stuff including Rubik's Cubes and Spider-Man toys.
Just when we figured this place couldn't be more fun if the kids had built it themselves, during a recent visit, we witnessed a staff training session giving the how-tos of airbrush tattoos.
At this rate, we think college is going to be a bit of a disappointment.