Hotels with water slides your kids will never want to leave

There is an age, roughly four to twelve, when the pool is not a feature of the holiday. It is the holiday. For those years, a hotel with proper water slides buys you happy children and, honestly, a bit of peace. But not all water-park hotels are equal, and the best one for a confident nine year old is the wrong one for a cautious four year old. Here is how to choose.

Match the slides to the child

The single biggest mistake is booking for the wrong age. Look for a resort that has:

• A toddler splash zone with jets and a shallow, zero-entry pool for the little ones.
• Mid-height slides with a low age or height limit, for the four to seven crowd building confidence.
• Big flumes for the older kids, so they are not bored.

A resort with all three keeps a mixed-age family happy at once, which is the real trick.

Do not forget the boring stuff

Slides are exciting. The things that actually make the week work are not.

• Lifeguards on the slides and the pools, and a genuinely shallow shallow-end.
• Shade near the water, because a full day in the sun is a lot for small skin.
• A quick lunch you can grab poolside without a full change of clothes.
• A room big enough that everyone sleeps after all that swimming.

A water park is only as good as its shallow end and its lifeguards. On this site, safety and the pool both feed the KidProof Score, so a resort cannot coast on big slides alone.

Where the slides are

The Costa del Sol is built for this: big resorts with on-site aqua parks, lazy rivers and toddler zones, plus the sunshine to use them. Its destination page shows the resorts that pass, and the live map lets you check prices for your dates in a couple of clicks. Pack the swim nappies.