wild rivers or raging waters?

[MinnieMouse73]

I would be interested in any opinions on which water park would be best for my family, please - we'll only have time to do one. We'll be staying in Anaheim, so any idea of how long it would take to drive to either would be helpful too :)

Here's the info:

There's me, my husband and 5-year-old daughter. Neither of us adults are desperate to do any vertical-drop-type slides, but we do all enjoy water slides especially ones we could enjoy all together.

My daughter is 45/46" tall and a real daredevil (who at WDW, age 3, was most upset to find she couldn't go on summit plummet at Blizzard Beach!) - she has been on all types of water slides at Blizzard Beach, Typhoon Lagoon and Wet-n Wild in Florida. Basically anything she was tall enough for :) (not water-related but this is the child who loved Tower of Terror at just-turned 3 years old). You get the picture? :lol

She is not, however, a good swimmer so we would like/need her to wear a life vest on any big slides. If it's a slide she has to go on alone, one of us would go down before her and be at the bottom, or obviously on a double slide we'd be with her but would want her to be wearing a life vest just in case anything happened to separate us on a slide.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance :)

[VegasMike21]

Wild Rivers is around 12 miles from Anaheim and Raging Waters is about 20-25minutes away. Wild Waters is a little bit cheaper then Raging Waters, I believe around $5 cheaper per person if I'm not mistaken.

[Zoemakes5]

Overall, I like Raging Waters much better. Bigger, more options. BUT, I'd go to each of their websites, maybe even call them, to get info. about the life vests. Many of the water parks don't allow life jackets/life vests on the slides, only in the pools. I haven't been to either one of them with kids, so I don't know the answer to that question. They both say on their websites that personal floation devices are not allowed, except coast guard approved life vests/jackets, but don't go into any detail as to whether they were allowed on the slides. The bigger water parks don't typically allow you to stand at the bottom, from my experience. We found both of these things out the hard way during a family trip to a water park, and I'd hate for you to have to worry about it after you drove there and paid!
Don't know if it makes any difference, RR has pretty good food, but it's expensive. They don't allow you to bring any outside food in. Wild Waters allows food, drink and coolers from outside.
Have fun!

[MinnieMouse73]

Thanks :)

We've decided to go with Raging Waters. I found out from their website that they're running a special at the moment - 2 season passes for $99. Although we're only planning on a day whilst in Anaheim, we're driving up from there to visit friends in San Jose for a couple of weeks. There's a Raging Waters up there too, and the season passes cover both water parks, so by doing the 2 we'll save a few $$ over buying separate sets of water park tickets. We'll just get a child's ticket at each park for our daughter.