Centennial Park Pool

Love how clean the new pools are, however the locker rooms could use some updating too!

Four star pool for parents with kids and a three star pool for those without.
We bought our Wilmette beach and pool pass this year and also have a pass to LifeTime. As compared to LifeTime in Old Orchard, this place is way better for young children and kids — kiddie pool with several fountains and a slide, a major pool that’s 3 feet or so deep with fountains and a «water» fort in the middle with toe small slides along with two water slides for older kids/​adults — one’s enclosed and faster than the other and damned near blew out my contacts. It was fun.
Food is pretty bad in my opinion — carnival grade — but for kids, they seem to be cool with that. Burgers, hotdogs, pop, candy and Popsicles/​good humor variety ice cream bars. Lifetime has better food, but you — of course — pay for it and portions are pretty small.
The kids like this place better as well. Size, scope and ROI, this is the pool to go to if you live in the Glenview/​Wilmette area.

New pools opens 7÷4÷2014− They will have three pools, one with two large slides, one with diving boards and one kiddie pool with splashing features (the only one that has not been renovated). There will also be food available on the weekends.

For years, Park Ridge has been experimenting with the idea of a water park comparable to some of the fancier suburban parks in Des Plaines, Elk Grove or even Niles. Seems every time they had a referendum, it got shot down by at least a 2:1 margin because of its ridiculous expense and added burden on taxpayers. One PR parent told me, «Why can’t Park Ridge come up with a really cool water park for the kids like other suburbs?»
Well, after settling on this as a compromise, the new wading pool is the closest thing to it, so be happy with what you have, I guess. The wading pool is an addition to the 2 larger swimming pools at Centennial already. What really sucks is they charge $ 5 per person to use the wading pool, PR resident or not. This includes parents, most of whom I saw sitting around reading newspapers and magazines on lounge chairs while their kids played in the water. There is also no distinction in the pricing between a 2 year old and an older child. So for $ 20, the four of us got to enter the wading pool area.
For comparison, the Rosemont Splash Pad is $ 6 for non-​residents, but parents or caretakers don’t pay. For $ 12, we could have gone to a neighboring town and enjoyed a better park.
Anyway, Centennial Wading Pool kept my kids occupied for 2 hours regardless. As its main feature, it has the overhead buckets that fill up with water and dump their contents on the kids below. It also has a small water slide with a padded area near the bottom.
The Stunt Baby liked the slide so much that he even went headfirst into the water though he’s not a swimmer. I had to pull him out, but he did not seem frightened at all. The wading pool areas range from 6 inches to 1−½ feet deep. There is also a series of water chutes with flaps so you can play with it like locks and dams on a river. My older son liked that more than the slide or the buckets. From a grownup’s perspective, it’s pretty lame though.
There were 2 lifeguards on duty and they were very vigilant. When a group of teenage boys showed up in the wading pool, they were immediately shown the way to the other pools, since this is for small kids only. There was no unruly play allowed either.
Yes it was fun, but unless you splurge on a residents’ summer pool pass for 4 at a cost of $ 150 and go at least once a week in the summer, this is not the best deal for the amount you pay to play.