Getting into Legoland California Water Park can be expensive, but there’s an easy way to save money on the entrance fee once inside Legoland.

Purchasing Tickets to Legoland California Water Park

On shoulder months, the Legoland Water Park is only open on weekends, roughly 5.5 hours per day (10:30AM to 4:PM). Even during peak summer months, you only get one more hour of playing in the water (10:30AM to 5PM).

Our annual passes to Legoland gave us entry to the Legoland California Water Park. Any Elite, Platinum, or Gold annual pass will give you entry. The cheapest price for the Gold annual pass is $239 (but if you plan to come here with any regularity, go for the Platinum pass for $289 for free parking). You could have one person in your party have Platinum and the rest Gold, but make sure the Gold blackout dates work for you.

Want to add the Legoland California Water Park as an add-on to a one-time ticket? It will cost you. While the price to add Sea Life Aquarium access was only $10, it’s an extra $75 to get a ticket that includes access to the water park. Ouch.

When you start looking at the two-day tickets, the upcharge isn’t quite as large ($40 per day), but you might want to start considering an annual pass.

Legoland California’s FAQ says you can only visit if you purchase a combo ticket with the park. If you only want to visit the water park, that’s a huge outlay of cash to come here.

But there is a cheaper way to purchase tickets

Next to the entrance of the Legoland California Water Park is a Guest Services window. Here, you can confirm you have access to the park or add on access.

How much is access? Just $5 for one-year-olds and $30 for everyone else. That’s quite a bit cheaper than what they try to request from you online in advance. Legoland even says in the FAQ that the $30 price is the upcharge price. So, why bother paying more in advance? The only thing I can think of is that they might not sell a walk-up ticket when it’s too crowded here. But that’s it.

Entry to Legoland California Water Park

The entrance to Legoland California Water Park is over by the Diving School in Fun Land.

Once here, you’ll scan your tickets to gain entry (or buy your day-of tickets). Just inside the entrance on the left is the locker area. If you want to rent a locker, there are two sizes available: large ($16) and jumbo ($23).

Inside the Legoland California Water Park

Let me just get this disclaimer right up front first: you’re going to want to bring your own towels. We’ve been to other water parks in the past and have easily found towels while there. But the first time we came here, we forgot to bring towels, limiting heavily what we could do.

Water Park

Right by the entrance is a zero-entry pool with a variety of water slides. The water slides themselves reminded us of the water slides at the Baha Mar resort’s water park. We always found this pool to be extremely crowded–the most crowded of any pool in this park. I think that’s just because it’s the closest pool to the entrance. We didn’t stay here long given the crowds.

Around the corner is a lazy river. This always seemed to have a long line, which is perhaps the worst part about it. Also weird is the shoe rack is nowhere near the entrance, so they expect you to stand on the hot, hot floor with no shoes while waiting in a long line. Once you get a innertube, it becomes your standard lazy river. It doesn’t go around the whole park and just around the section near the pool with the water slides above.

When you complete a loop, you can decide to continue for another loop or call it quits. If you’re in a long line to get in, let’s face it: you’re probably not just doing one loop.

Surfer’s Cove

I think the names of the different zones need a little retooling, as Surfer’s Cove is just one slide and a splash pad next to it. The kids enjoyed going up on the slide, which is timed to create a mini competition between each lane.

The bumps along the slide made for a fun ride, which is why the kids wanted to keep doing it again and again.

Pirate Shores

Next to Surfer’s Cove is Pirate Shores, home to the Pirate Reef ride. This one is a rather large boat that takes you up a cliff to go down a waterfall with a huge splash. As you might expect, you will get wet on this ride–and quite a bit wet too. The wait wasn’t ever too bad to get on this ride in part because the vehicle is so large.

If you don’t want to go on the ride, you can interact with riders by splashing water on them as they pass, as Char did here when she sprayed the rest of the family. This was one of her favorite things to do at the park.

Chima Water Park

There is another zero-entry pool in the back in the Chima Water Park. This one has plenty of buckets to get you wet and a couple of slides too. One of the more entertaining slides is the one shaped like a reptile’s mouth.

And all the way in the back of the entire water park is the Lion Temple wave pool. Guests younger than 48″ in height must wear a lifejacket conveniently located by the wave pool.

As for the wave pool itself, it’s not too rough and the waves come with decent frequency. There will be periods of waves and still water, but the gaps between waves isn’t too long. It’s a nice activity to end the day with.

Dining

There are several quick-service restaurants found within the Legoland California Water Park boundaries. I’ll be honest up front–we didn’t eat at any of these restaurants. Instead, we only ate inside the main Legoland California theme park. The food quality appeared fairly consistent with what you would find elsewhere in Legoland.

Is it worth it to go to Legoland California Water Park?

I think the decision on whether the Legoland California Water Park is worth it purely matters on how much you paid. This park is not worth $75/visit, which is what they’re trying to charge you in advance on a one-day ticket. While the two-day ticket price is potentially more reasonable, it pretty much forces you into going both days, which might not be what you want to do.

Instead, the walk-up rate of $30 seems reasonably priced and more consistent with what we would be comfortable paying to come here. Thankfully, we didn’t need to make that decision because all annual passes except the cheapest Silver option come with access by default.

Please don’t overpay when coming here.

Have you been to Legoland California Water Park?

Suggested reading:

• Legoland California: An Excellent Option for Kids
• Beautiful and Yet a Major Blemish: A Review of the Park Hyatt Aviara
• Great for Legoland Stays: A Review of the Sheraton Carlsbad