
Best hotel water parks and pools in metro Phoenix: 8 places to slide and splash
Hotels and resorts throughout the greater Phoenix area are famous for their pools and water parks, offering a refreshing escape from triple-digit temperatures.
Some are designed for family fun and include theme park-style thrills like wave pools or an eight-story water slide. Others are adults-only oases where people can relax and enjoy a drink.
Whether travelers are seeking thrills or tranquility, they can enjoy Arizona's hotel pools or water parks by staying at the hotels or purchasing a day pass through ResortPass.
Here are the best hotel water parks and pools in Phoenix and Scottsdale.
The Arizona Grand Resort and Spa's Oasis Water Park has 7 acres of family fun. It boasts eight-story-tall water slides, a wave pool, lazy river, hot tub and Wild Cat Springs, an area specifically for smaller children.Details: 8000 Arizona Grand Parkway, Phoenix. 877-800-4888, arizonagrandresort.com.
Great Wolf Lodge Arizona offers an indoor water park where the temperature is climate-controlled to 84 degrees year-round.
The 85,000‐square‐foot attraction includes a lazy river, wave pool, water slides, raft slides and an activity area for smaller visitors.
Details: 7333 N. Pima Road, on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community near Scottsdale. 888-962-9653, greatwolf.com/arizona.
The JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa offers a collection of five pools, all heated to 82 degrees year-round.
The resort opened the AquaRidge Waterpark in 2023, featuring three water slides, an enhanced lazy river and an adults-only lounge area.
Details: 5350 E. Marriott Drive, Phoenix. 480-293-5000, marriott.com.
This former Hyatt Regency hotel, which was elevated to a Grand Hyatt in November 2024, has a 2.5-acre water playground with nine pools, fountains and a three-story, high-speed water slide.
Before the hotel became Grand Hyatt, the pool area was renovated with upgrades including new lounge chairs, cabanas, a kiosk where bathers can get towels and rent pool floats, and changes to the poolside restaurants that included new menus curated by celebrity chef Richard Blais.
Details: 7500 E. Doubletree Ranch Road, Scottsdale. 480-444-1234, hyatt.com.
The Adventure Water Park at the Westin Kierland Resort & Spa in Phoenix has a lazy river and 110-foot water slide as well as a FlowRider surf simulator.
Those looking to make their stay a little more special can reserve the Tommy Bahama Relaxation Reef for their own private island in the lazy river.
Details: 6902 E. Greenway Parkway, Phoenix. 480-624-1000, marriott.com.
The Hilton Phoenix Resort at the Peak in north Phoenix is an all-suite resort offering the River Ranch water park, a lush pool area complete with lazy river and water slide as well as a baby pool.
Details: 7677 N. 16th St., Phoenix. 602-997-2626, hilton.com.
Looking for the best things to do in Arizona? Sign up for our newsletter.
The Fairmont Scottsdale Princess offers six pool areas for guests to enjoy.
The Sonoran Splash pool caters to families with two 200-foot twisting water slides, one for riders 42 inches and taller and one for littler kids. If you have very small kiddos, Sonoran Splash offers a zero-entry pool deck, sandbox play area and beach toys.
Sunset Beach, the newest and largest pool at the Princess, has white sand beaches and a splash pad.
The Privado Villas, the Princess's exclusive hotel within a hotel, has its own relaxation pool with views of the TPC Scottsdale stadium golf course and the McDowell Mountains.
Details: 7575 E. Princess Drive, Scottsdale. 480-585-4848, fairmont.com/scottsdale.
Arizona Biltmore, the historic resort distinguished by its Frank Lloyd Wright-style architecture, has seven pools. Its variety appeals to different sets of travelers, including the Saguaro Pool for adults-only relaxation and the Paradise Pool for family fun. The Paradise Pool is where guests can ride the Twist triple waterslide.
The variety of pools was a significant factor in USA TODAY readers naming Arizona Biltmore as one of the resorts with the best hotel pools in the U.S.
Details: 2400 E. Missouri Ave., Phoenix. 602-955-6600, arizonabiltmore.com.
Mountain Modern, Remi and VAI: Biggest new hotels and renos in Arizona in 2025
Michael Salerno is an award-winning journalist who's covered travel and tourism since 2014. His work as The Arizona Republic's consumer travel reporter aims to help readers navigate the stresses of traveling and get the best value for their money on their vacations. He can be reached at Michael.Salerno@gannett.com.
Subscribe to azcentral.com today.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Best hotel water parks and pools in Phoenix for summer 2025

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
Chef Richard Blais' latest concoction may make your skin crawl
Chef Richard Blais is pretty adventurous when it comes to food. 'I've always been like that. If it sounds a little weird, it's cool for me,' the Top Chef All-Stars winner, restauranteur, James Beard-nominated cookbook author and 'Next Level Chef' judge said with a smile. But his latest project may make some people's skin crawl. Blais partnered with Orkin on series of recipes incorporating insects for a video called 'Bug Bites' debuting on Orkin's website on Aug. 18. 'One of our best recipes was a mealworm pesto, which was great because Orkin is the best in pests and I'm the best in pesto, so it was a match made in heaven,' he joked. However, it wasn't all easy to stomach, even for himself. He spoke with USA TODAY about facing his fears, why It's important for chefs to travel, the surprising thing he's done on planes and more. This interview was edited and condensed for clarity. Question: What inspired your involvement in this particular project? Richard Blais: Just up for the challenge. Also for me, if you would have asked me a question a couple years ago: what are some foods that you might not like? I would say insects, to be fair. I got to eat some on different shows, etc., so it was sort of overcoming my own mental hurdle to do this. And I'm so glad I did because I learned so much, and besides that, it was just a lot of fun. Like, "Hey, do you want to eat a tarantula on camera?' Yes. Let's see how that goes. Have you previously tried insects on your travels? Not on my own, like, hey, I'm in a restaurant, and I'm going to order. But in my reality show career, I have been tasked with a few, eating some insects. And in my travels, I have seen them in markets and stuff like that and always been amazed at their aroma or flavor and how it's not just, oh, it's just another protein source, but how every ingredient has its own flavor. That goes for meal worms and ants as well as it goes for octopus and sea urchin. Food can have a stigma when it's something that people are not familiar with. And this video may help break some of those barriers and let people know, it's OK to try all sorts of things. One-hundred percent. I always preach to my kids, "Hey, try it. You don't have to like it, but it's good to try things." And I think "Bug Bites" was great for me for that because it forced me to try some of these things. Am I going to be on the tarantula of the month gift club? Probably not. That still freaks me out, but I'm glad I did it and I overcame some fears. It's really, really important to realize that different people and different cultures eat different things and one's not better than the other. They just happen to be different. In other parts of the world, this is part of their diet. I've been to Thailand and seen grasshoppers and grasshopper wings and all sorts of things, and again it is normal. I think what really it came down to (is) at some point you're like, it's a scorpion or it's a crab, They're similar. We often call lobsters, the cockroaches of the sea. Once you wrap your mind around it, that it's just another food source – it is a normal food source, depending what that ingredient is and where you are in the world – it does make it a little easier to grasp. But we do have the skittishness, squeamishness, of which I had as well and still have a little bit. How did you come up with ways to make it more palatable so you even could enjoy them as much as possible? You know, I love being in front of the camera and producing things now, too and writing my own stuff, so one of the challenges was yes, I would like to be able to get through this challenge. I'd like to keep raising the ladder and the stakes as we eat each insect. So yeah, let's toss it in some sauce or let's ground it up there. There's that way that you could approach it, and I did with some recipes, but the other end of it is no, I want this to be hard for me, and I want to see a tarantula leg sticking out of this sushi roll, and I want the ants to just be whole on this ice cream cone. So it was kind of a balance – also knowing, I think for the viewer, you want to see, hey, is he going to eat a whole scorpion? They're little, by the way. Spoiler alert. Did anything surprise you? The mealworm pesto. Speaking to the entomologist about meal worms, that they're in grains and you sort of get into this you taste like what you eat. You know, like if a pig's eating acorns, they taste like acorns. And then using it, they have a nutty flavor. Replacing pine nuts in a pesto with the meal worms, that was one of the cheffy moments where I'm like, OK, this makes total sense. If I'm cooking on a competition show, or even in a restaurant quite honestly, and that was a recipe, you would think it was delicious and you would advance in the show. I'm still pretty excited about it. How does food influence you when you travel and how do you approach food when you travel? I'm a chef because I love to eat ... And it's a big part of all of my travel. If I'm traveling, I'm pretty simple when I'm alone on a business trip. Not to lose my chef credentials here, but you can find me at the local fast-casual salad pickup spot pretty frequently, if I'm traveling domestically by myself. When my wife is involved, she's much more of the planner and we'll set a lot of things up and we'll read a lot of publications and find out what the cool, hip behind-the-scenes ramen spot is or what's the taco shop that we have to go to or what's the fine dining restaurant wherever we're at. But it's definitely a big part of travel for us, even if it just happens to be like we're going to go to the local market, we're going to buy a bunch of things, and we're going to come home and cook. We just spent a week on the island of Nevis, and it happens to be mango season there, so when you accidentally fall into one of those moments – you have all these beautiful, ripe mangoes – making a nice, easy salsa at the house on your vacation, that's perfect. It's a part of vacationing. How has your travel influenced the way that you cook? I think you are a sum of all of your experiences, so I think every cook and every chef goes someplace and comes back with an ingredient that they found or a technique or a flavor profile or even as a restauranteur, a concept you've seen that you want to riff off of. So I think it's probably the most important thing for a chef is to travel. Do you have a favorite travel memory? Not one specific memory, but I think just collectively, my family loves going to Hawaii. It's become a really special place for us, and even on the food and the cuisine side, it's just some of my favorite foods. And because we travel there somewhat regularly, one of my daughters, on like a third-grade questionnaire, the question was, what's your favorite food, and she wrote luau. Internationally, our family's first trip to Paris, the first trip to Rome. For me, as someone who studied a lot of European cuisines and then to be on the ground with your family and – kind of getting back to "Bug Bites" – introducing escargot to your daughter for the first time and she's like, yum. What is your preferred way to travel? I spend so much time in the air ... It is becoming now, in my life, more of a chore than it used to be. Used to love to lock in and watch five hours of movies and now it's more just like transportation, but I do like flying. There is something also really wild about being on the open ocean in a boat, if you're up for it. My whole family isn't, so we would do a lot more of that if it wasn't for some seasickness. When you fly, aisle or window seat? I am the middle on the family flights, where it has to happen. I'm taking one for the team. I prefer a window. Even though with all the all the time I've spent in the air, I love a good Instagram story of take-off or landing. There's something still just very entertaining to me about looking out a window and seeing the world from 30,000 feet. Is there anything you splurge on, on vacation? Depends, on the type of vacation. I think food for sure. I think we're always looking for one or two meals, and that might mean a Michelin-star restaurant or a really nice restaurant. I think for me, as someone who likes sports, it might be an expensive tee time at a nice golf course or hanging out at the spa. All of those sound great, by the way. If you can do all of those things on one trip, check it off: spa, a little golf, a Michelin-star restaurant, then go find like that local hole in the wall place, that works for me. And then as parents, just being able to sit in a hotel bed and watch TV for two hours uninterrupted is pretty fun. Disney's Michelin-starred restaurant: What to expect at Victoria & Albert's Is there a travel must-have that you always take with you? I've run six New York City Marathons – sorry, that's a weird flexy brag – and the first one I ran ... I have the bag from that marathon, and I still travel with that bag. You can't see that it says New York City Marathon. All the letters have just dissolved off of it. It's just a backpack, and now it's just like a security blanket sort of thing. I always travel with this bag. It has served me well. Do you have any travel pet peeves or maybe an unpopular travel opinion? It's a weird one. You know what, if I have enough time, I'm a big fan of the (airport) lounge shower, which not everyone is a big fan of. I'm just being very authentic here. And if I have a 2-hour layover and the shower is available, why not just try to smell your best at all moments? Does anything grind your gears, that other travelers do? If you're on a phone call or on your iPad or whatever and you're just playing it loud or we're literally rolling down the taxi (way) and you're on a phone call, I don't need to hear your business. No one needs to hear all of your stuff. But another pet peeve that a lot of people have that I'm up for is making your tuna fish salad sandwich on the plane. Go for it. One time I had a little black truffle that I was gifted at an event, and I started traveling with this little black truffle. I would get the eggs on the air flight meal, but I would pull out my own little black truffle and shave it on the eggs. I think if you can cook and like you're making a sandwich or a little charcuterie board and we're in the air, hey, listen, go for it.
%3Amax_bytes(150000)%3Astrip_icc()%2FTAL-header-pokemon-beach-resort-suite-grand-hyatt-tokyo-POKEMONSUITE0825-68bb0197df9842938fdd66d23d8f74bf.jpg&w=3840&q=100)

Travel + Leisure
5 days ago
- Travel + Leisure
This Tokyo Hotel Has Pokémon-themed Rooms—With Giant Snorlax Plushies and Pikachu Pancakes
Calling all Pokémon fans—get ready to catch 'em all at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo this summer. The luxury, 387-room hotel, located in Tokyo's Roppongi Hills complex, is collaborating with the Nintendo, the parent company of Pokémon, to give its fans the ultimate respite this summer: a few nights surrounded by their favorite pocket monsters. From now through the end of August, guests can make a reservation to experience either the Pokémon Beach Resort Stay or the Pokémon Suite Stay packages. The Suite Stay package is only available in one room and comes with an array of goodies. For a whopping 550,000 yen (about $3,730), guests will get a night's stay in Grand Hyatt Tokyo's 1,291-square-foot Chairman Suite. Decked out in the hotel's signature warm woods and lush fabrics, the king-sized suite features an expansive living room; a deep, limestone soaking tub; and complimentary Balmain bath amenities. As part of the Pokémon collaboration, those staying in the spacious suite will enjoy beach-inspired decor featuring palm trees, Pokémon illustrations, and a variety of Poké-plushies. The latter includes a Pikachu and Piplup plush to take home, and two giant Lapras and Snorlax plushies to enjoy in the room. Additionally, guests can take home one of the hotel's collaboration sets, which has a custom Pokémon-embroidered Garnier-Thiebaut bathrobe and beach towel, a beach bag, a cap, and an oversized T-shirt. Those who opt for the standard Pokémon Beach Resort Stay, available in 10 of the hotel's twin rooms, will still get to experience the beautiful summer-themed decorations, but at around a fifth of the price. Here, guests will receive one plushie—a miniature Lapras—and a smaller goodie bag which features the embroidered beach bag, cap, and oversized T-shirt. The Pokémon experience extends beyond the rooms. The hotel has an exclusive menu for those who take advantage of the package, with special themed dishes modeled after some of the franchise's most beloved characters. Suite guests, for example, can indulge in a tropical gourmet Bulbasaur burger made with pork shoulder and grilled pineapple, a Squirtle ricotta cheese tart, and a Piplup blue soda for one dinner. Both suite and standard stay guests can also look forward to custom Pikachu fruit pancakes for breakfast, alongside offerings from The French Kitchen, the hotel's all-day restaurant. Travelers interested in reserving one of the Pokémon Beach Resort Stays can book directly on the Grand Hyatt Tokyo website. The hotel recommends booking your experience at least three days in advance, as it will be booked on a first-come, first-served basis. Get ready to be Grand Hyatt Tokyo's next Pokémon Master.

Business Insider
27-07-2025
- Business Insider
I always thought cruises were fun for adults. Taking my kids on one made me change my mind.
Sixteen years ago, for our honeymoon, my husband and I went on our first cruise through the southern Caribbean. From elegant meals and relaxation by the pool to visiting multiple destinations without having to pack and re-settle repeatedly, we were sold from that first sailing. After becoming parents, we embarked on three more cruises to Alaska, Bermuda, and the Bahamas over the next decade. Each time, escaping without the kids, we found the respite we needed to return to parenting and the monotony of everyday life. We took a cruising hiatus But then COVID hit, and the idea of cruising fell to the back burner. As someone who is immunosuppressed, our getaways morphed into mountain adventures with the security of social distancing. But a piece of me yearned for the gentle rocking of the sea, for the socialization of meeting others who love traveling via the ocean, for the attentive staff that simply want you to have the best getaway of your life. Cruising called to me from afar. This past January, when my husband secured our boys' spring break week off from work, I turned to Google to discover what last-minute bookings were still available. I compared all-inclusive resorts to cruises that stopped at various ports, and by far, cruising was more affordable for our family of four. Pictures of Coco Cay, the Royal Caribbean island just north of Nassau, were displayed across my screen. Matching our dates perfectly, a cruise to the Bahamas was leaving from Bayonne, New Jersey — within an hour and a half's drive from our home. It felt meant to be — so we booked, and our love of cruising reignited. Cruising is more than a parent-only getaway With our boys — ages 10 and 13 — on board with us for the first time, I realized cruising is not only ideal for a parent-only getaway. It also happens to be the perfect vacation for families with tweens/teens because it offers more for less. The endless activities kept my boys busy for the entirety of our trip. Visiting a tropical beach like Coco Cay was blissful, and my boys experienced the white sand and clear water that our Jersey shore getaways lack. On board, when they weren't swimming or lounging in the hot tub, they were playing soccer or basketball in a state-of-the-art sports arena or partaking in one of the unique adventures our ship had to offer — like iFLY, FlowRider (surf simulator), and Bumper Cars. Live music and entertainment energize the evenings, and activities like rock climbing and cooking, and exercise classes are around every corner. My sushi-loving teen and I took a sushi-making class, and it did not disappoint. The ongoing schedule of activities is organized in the cruise line app, so you'll never miss a thing. Aboard the ship, it was as if my boys had traveled back to the 1990s. Our world has become unsafe for children to wander without adult supervision, but on cruises, teens can explore independently in a safe, family-friendly environment — possibly the best aspect of cruising with older kids! The ship's boundaries become a haven for teens in search of independence, and even tweens can roam safely in smaller areas like the pool deck. Cruising also solves the travel dilemmas that families typically face. While you're dining in elegance, the ship is sailing toward a new port. How else can you expose your children to multiple destinations and cultures in one trip without packing and repacking, wasting time in the car or on a plane, and without spending the exorbitant cost for airline tickets? You can't. Forget the backseat arguments and boredom that comes with road travel because the fun doesn't stop while you're sailing. They made friends on the boat From poolside friendships to designated teen hangout spaces, kids are also bound to meet others around the same age — and unlike meeting a friend at a resort on land, these new buddies are there for the entirety of your vacation. On the first day, my 10-year-old made a new friend and now they stay in touch via iMessenger. My husband and I used to cruise for a break from parenting. But now that my kids are older, I'm convinced cruising is the perfect family getaway, and we don't intend to sail without our boys again.