Follonica
When we were in Italy last year we visited Aquafan water park in Rimini and we all had such a fun day, when we discovered that there was a water park near Parc Albatros, we made sure that we allocated a day to a visit there. We read on the website that it’s cheaper (and quieter) to visit on week day and there’s no need to book tickets in advance. We turned up in Follonica just after 10am when it opened. You can park for free or you can pay €3 to park your car under a shaded area.
There’s lots of free seating and shade available however you have a pay €4 for a subbed and we treated ourselves to two. There is a lovely area for parents and toddlers however as our kids are older (12, 12 and 14), we headed for the bigger slides. We had a ball at Follonica. The twins actually went on a particular slide 36 times they loved it so much.
You can buy hot food there, including burgers, chips but you can also buy pasta and cold salads. I was impressed to see that the ‘fruiteria’ selling watermelon, fruit and fresh coconut had the longest queue!
We were (surprisingly) quite organised that day and brought our own picnic lunch in with us but we all still enjoyed a coffee and Nutella covered waffle in the afternoon.
June was a great time of year to go as there were next to no queues for any of the rides, in fact I would say that there were more staff in the park than visitors! I can imagine though that it gets busier in high season.
It cost us €100 to get into Acqua Village and we expected to stay for just a couple of hours but ended up staying six hours as were all having so much fun so I feel that it was great value day out.
One thing to note is that you can hire a locker for €4 which is a good idea if you want to all enjoy slides together without worrying about your valuables. Also if you’ve arrive after 2:30pm, the entrance fee is reduced. Overall, Acqua Village Follonica was a great day out and we would all recommend it to families visiting Tuscany.
Cecina
We posted some go pro videos on our social media channels of the fun we were having at Follonica and we were delighted when their sister water park at Cecina contacted us and invited us to come along and see what we thought of their park.
This water park was a little further north from Parc Albatros, about 40 mins. Parking again was free with no option to park under shade. The entrance fee was the same as Follonica. This park was a similar layout but with slightly different slides. It cost €3 to hire a sunbed and locker here. Yet again there was a lovely area for parents with young children and lots of slides for the ‘big kids’. There was a particular slide for over 14 years and my eldest and James loved it. I wasn’t so brave so was happy to film them on that one!
In both parks there is a popular ‘wave’ pool that simulates waves every hour and that’s a great time to go on the popular slides, not that there was much of a queue for any of them to be honest. We spent over four hours at Cecina park and really enjoyed it.
Disclaimer :
We were invited to attend the two water parks as guests of Aqua Village and Canvas Holidays. Our images and video content were created by Saucepan Kids and our opinions are 100% honest.
