Siam Park is a major new water theme park attraction in the south of Tenerife, newly opened in September 2008.
Siam Park is located in the resort of Playa de las Americas, next to exit 29 of the TF1 motorway. I found it to be easy walking distance from my apartment in Torviscas. There are free buses provided by Siam Park that pick up and drop off visitors. You could also take a taxi which is unlikely to be an expensive ride from anywhere in Playa de las Americas, there is a taxi rank outside.
You can't miss the main entrance with it's large twin domed towers. As you go through the entrance gateways you pay at the window, the prices are very clearly displayed. The adult price at the time of writing is EUR28.
Once inside I started to look around for the changing rooms etc because they are not immediately or obviously right in front of you, What is right in front of you is a glass fronted tank with some sea lions in it. I couldn't help but watch them for a few minutes. I then followed the path up past the sea lions where there was a sign pointing towards the toilets and changing rooms. These are situated in a collection of buildings built on stilts over water with wooden decking linking them.
A locker cost EUR3 to rent but there is also a returnable EUR2 deposit on the key so you actually hand over EUR5 for a locker. You can also hire beach towels too. The main locker house while right next to, is seperate from the toilet/shower/changing rooms.
The park had been open less than a week at the time of my visit and newness was very evident in just about everything. I hope it stays that way. There were still unobtrusive bits of work going on to complete some features. I noticed there were a lot of Lifeguards which isn't such a bad thing. The park has been built using very effective use of the space it occupies, this makes it feel quite compact and perhaps smaller than it might actually be. I certainly didn't get the feeling of it being a long walk from one slide to the next even though it did mean going up quite a few steps. There are adequate signposts to help you find your way about but I found I got my bearings very quickly. The concrete paths need the feet of a few million visitors to take the rough edges off them. My bare feet were getting a bit sore after a while. Some others had the right idea. Wear a pair of cheap flip flops and leave them in a corner somewhere near the bottom a slide and pop them back on when walking somewhere else.
For the big kids the park features a number of "white knuckle" type slides, height restrictions apply. The centre piece appears to be the Tower of Power, a frighteningly steep slide not for the faint hearted. The steep drop accelerates you to a very high speed before it levels out and you shoot through a tube passing through an aquarium before exiting into the pool at the bottom. I found that by the time you get into the tube you are going so fast and in an enclosed space it throws up so much spray in your face that you can't actually see very much. Something occured to me later, on all the other slides you get the usual whoops and screams as people go down them but not on the tower of power. No one screams, no one whoooaaaahs! It scares you silent as you drop down.
For the little kids there is the Lost City. This is a feature specifically for children and has a number of small child size slides, water pistols etc and is sort of set out like a big climbing frame with walkways from one part to another. There are a number of sunbeds around the edge of the Lost City so that parents can keep an eye on the children while they play. The lifeguard was very attentive making sure the kids didn't run about too quickly. The lost city also has a what can only be described as a very big bucket that constantly fills with running water, when it is full, it tips over, drenching everyone beneath with water. Some of the big kids liked that too.
For a much more relaxed water ride there is the Mai tai river. You just sit in a rubber tube and float your way along the meandering "river". In the island created by the river as it circles around there are sunbeds in secluded spots.
If you want to get a tan or relax after throwing yourself down slides for an hour or two, the best place is going to be Siam beach which is very impressive and turned out to be what I liked most about Siam Park. It is an artificial beach made using tonnes of imported white sand from Portugal and a fresh water sea complete with a big wave machine. At one end of the beach is the Beach Club, the park's main restaurant, at the other end is a bar. There is also a beach wear shop. Every so often a lifeguard bangs a gong, well it is in keeping with the eastern theme, this tells you that the wave machine is being turned on. This was the cue for nearly everyone on the beach to get in the water and swim or wade out towards the wave machine. A venting of what looked like steam or water spray from the machine house told us the wave was coming and it sure did. A big six foot high clean wave comes rolling towards you, lots of people then started swimming furiously so that they would ride on the top of the wave. Everyone gets swept back by the wave it is so big. With grins on our faces we then swam back out again ready for the next one.
I did not eat at Siam Park so can't comment on the food or it's cost. I did buy a bottle of water and can of Pepsi from one of the shops which was quite expensive but I doubt any of us would expect any different at a theme park. I should have put a bottle of iced water in my bag and fetched it from the locker room when I decided to sit down at the beach.
The park closes at 6pm and as that time approaches all the visitors are politely ushered towards the changing rooms, lockers and exit. There was a fair queue to hand our locker keys back but the staff dealt with it quickly, returning our EUR2 deposits. I had a quick look around the nice gift shops and a last look at the sea lions and that was it, the end of what I found to be an enjoyable day at Siam Park.
