Holiday Inn North East Pennsylvania Water Park

Ahhhhh New York!! I have such a love/hate relationship with you!!! Due to the world being chaos right now and travel restrictions galore here in good ole New York, our usual February Break vacation plans drastically changed. With mandatory quarantines in place for NY residents, and those of us with a huge case of wanderlust having to choose which vacations to keep and which to cancel since now we have to tack on quarantine days as time off from work, staycations are looking more & more appealing to fill those gaps.

Holiday Inn Express Water Park 

Last weekend we headed 45 minutes south of Jamestown to North East Pennsylvania. Home of the Holiday Inn Express Water Park Hotel. Since we couldn’t head south and chill poolside this February, this water park hotel was exactly what we were looking for. We could chill poolside all weekend long while not freezing to death since the fabulous pool was inside. Plus, no mandatory quarantine! 

Water Park Facts 

The Holiday Inn Express North East Water Park is a swim at your own risk water park. This means zero life guards and there isn’t an employee keeping track of how many people are actually in the pool area. So depending on your comfort levels with crowds, this would be your deciding factor on booking your stay! If you look at the photos above, you can see that even on a weekend, the crowd size was less than other popular water parks in the area such as Splash Lagoon. We spent a weekend at Splash Lagoon over the summer and while we did have a blast, the place was more on the packed side! People are definitely taking advantage of such a fabulous local Holiday Inn hotel at a killer price, it’s not overly crowded and for the most part people respected others and kept their distance.

The Holiday Inn Express also supplies towels!!! I always consider this a huge win at any pool. Less things for this mama to lug around.

The pool area opens at 10am and will close at 9pm sharp! So you will have a huge window of opportunity to take advantage of the sweet water park!!! I have a feeling this is why the pool area is never complete chaos. People are in and out all day long at different times! If the pool looks at tad bit people-y, come back later! 

Our Thoughts

Would we book the hotel again is the question that blew up my Instagram DM’s this weekend. It’s always funny to me that whenever I post resort photos anywhere online, the question people are dying to know is if I would go again lol.... I guess photos can be deceiving and y’all want the real tea! 

The answer is YES!!! We are huge Splash Lagoon fans, and honestly my husband & I feel cheated that we never hit up the Holiday Inn Express Waterpark when my daughter was a toddler! Y’all know how much cash we could have saved?!?! This water park is PERFECT for kids under 12! If your kiddos are not ready for mega slides, book this hotel instead and save yourself some dough! We are actually considering coming back for my daughters 9th birthday in March, that’s how much fun my daughter had. Perfect staycation spot for all of you Western New Yorkers & North West Pennsylvania dwellers!