Can Fun be Ruined by Something That Happens After?

The Boy and I took his one of his friends to join my mom, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew for a weekend of water park fun at Kalahari Resort in northern Ohio. We had a wonderful time in the water and on the slides, and the kids loved the huge Dave-and-Buster’s-style game room. The whole place was very clean and well-kept, there were life guards positioned all over the place—like every twenty feet or so—and all of the staff members were very friendly and helpful. Everyone had a very good time, and I planned to come home (after a stop at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton) and write a rave review of the resort as a great family destination for people within a three or four hour drive of the place.

And then I heard this morning that a three-year-old drowned there after we left yesterday. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that we were gone when it happened—I know I’m cowardly, but I hope I never have to have contact with that kind of grief. The poor, poor family!

The mom said she lost sight of the little boy, who was playing with an older brother, and I can see how that could happen, because the pool areas got really, really crowded as the days heated up, because you don’t have to be staying at the resort to use the pools and slides. At one point the wave pool looked like a can of sardines. So I’m wondering if this kind of tragedy could be prevented if Kalahari would change its admissions policies to only allow a certain number of people to use the place at any given time.

Sigh. I had been planning on taking The Boy and another kid for a weekend over the winter, as they are well beyond the age where they need to be followed around, so I could just park myself in a hotel room, order up some room service, and read and knit to my heart’s content, but now I may rethink it. Not because I think they’d be in too much danger, but because . . . it seems weird to me to think of heading for a weekend of fun to a place where a child died. Is that stupid? I don’t know.