Food and Drink

Swimming makes you hungry and thirsty but most parks prohibit outside food and drink.  It may be a ploy to force you to eat their food at inflated prices or it may be for sanitary reasons or it may just be that the cost of cleaning up and disposing of waste from food wrappers is such that for a park to pay custodial employees and waste management they have to charge higher prices.
If you haven't resigned yourself to paying $10 for nachos and a soda then what can you do?  One option is gathering your sopping wet little clan and heading out to the car for a drive through lunch at a fast food chain.  This is only tolerable during the warmer months as wet hair and skin can really chill you or even cause frostbite in winter.  This involves more effort than it first appears:  there are life jackets to take off, car seats to buckle and then there is a return to the park.
Staying more than one night at a resort?  Then, it is easy to go back to your room and shower/change to go out or order pizza from an outside chain for delivery. 

Cooler car camping:  Don't forget napkins!
Eating food from home or grocery can be fun and a bit healthier. 
If you plan ahead with a large cooler and dry or wet ice you can keep drinks and lunches cold.  Hungry kids will eat carrots and apple slices or celery with peanut butter and raisins that they would laugh at if served in front of the television.  Or you can pick up deli or subway sandwiches on the way in.  There are many foods that are inexpensive but are festive:  Otter pops which you freeze at home will likely stay frozen in a cooler and even if they don't kids enjoy drinking them just bring scissors.  Refrigerated pudding and yogurt are tasty deserts which have calcium and protein.   There are 100% juice boxes and capri suns.  Little children like the apple juice sippers with the novelty toys on top like Thomas, Mickey, or Clifford.  Save those plastic (never reuse Styrofoam) cups from kids meals at restaurants with the lids.  They are safe to wash in the dishwasher.  Bring reusable lidded cups and fancy novelty bendy straws or paper umbrellas from a grocery or party store.  You can serve juice mixed with sparkling or seltzer water to lower calorie count and give it fizz.  Another beverage option is packaged milk.  In the grocery you can find shelf stable milk in drink boxes which will give your kids calcium and help their muscles recover after working out.     
If you want to save money a large pitcher of pre mixed Kool-Aid and bags of chips and cookies are cheap snacks that will satisfy as long as you eat a good breakfast lunch and dinner that day.

If your kids are WHINING for snacks inside the park ask yourself - is it the packaging - does something light up?  Is it the novelty - we don't eat funnel cake and cotton candy at home?  Or is my child hungry?  A hungry child will eat carrot sticks and a thirsty child will drink tap water.  Or is my child TIRED?  It can be exhausting to splash and run around.  You don't have to stay 8 hours to get your money's worth - just stay until your children have done everything they want to.  If everyone leaves happy and wanting to come back then it was a good day.

Final but IMPORTANT note:  Wash your hands before you touch your food or your mouth.  A pediatrician at Dayton Children's Hospital has warned me about all the bad things that can spread at water parks. I won't name individual parks here that were implicated because I don't think the blame rests with the parks themselves.  Swim diapers keep poop from floating in the pools but they are designed to be nonabsorbent so they aren't keeping any pee in.  There are lots of little kids who are having such a good time they need reminders to go to the bathroom and may pee in the pool even if they are out of diapers.