Just spent a few hours at Core Hong Kong, a water park with slides, obstacles and other floating things located in Tai Po near Tai Po Kau. With no traffic, on a Sunday morning it takes about 35 minutes from Pokfulam so about 20 minutes from Central.
July 8th, 2018 was the official opening day and after a totally confusing and suspicious booking process, Grobbler and I were two of just a handful of people there. I booked online about a week ago, when you clicked the BUY TICKETS link on the Core Hong Kong website, it took you to Klook’s booking website, which is confusing about what you are actually buying as there were all these options for “Once Piece” tickets, Water Park Tickets and well, basically rather confusing.
Everyday until 16th July was booked, which I thought was odd and 2 days before I had booked, I got an email from Klook saying that Core Hong Kong was going to be closed for renovation until around 28th July. I thought something was off about this and visited the Core Hong Kong website again and noticed the link has changed to another booking engine, and this showed 100 tickets available for each of the upcoming days, with no mention of the rather confusing indoor/outdoor games area. Anyway, booked 2 hrs and there were less than 10 people for both sessions on a Sunday morning.
There’s parking at Core Hong Kong, free parking. You walk over to what looks like an abandoned building and find the staff, who were very friendly and helpful. There were so little bookings that she basically knew who we were and didn’t have to show anything. You get a band, a stamp, and then pay $100 for a locker, $50 of which you get back. There’s a short briefing before you get to go onto the actual water park/water slides, lasts a few minutes and just the typical stuff. Everybody has to wear life jackets whether you can swim or not. On a side note I saw one helper wearing jeans, which is retarded. Won’t make any more comments about that!
So basically Core Hong Kong is just some giant inflatable lily’s and obstacles. There’s really only one slide, but it’s a good one. If you are at all unfit or a bit weak, you’re going to struggle getting up to the top as you need to use a bit of muscle to climb your way up. I saw one tubby dude taking forever to get up here and being one by one, I wouldn’t like to come here on a busy day. The Water Slide is quite good, it’s steep and only lasts a few seconds, and you bomb down and hit the water with your ass so quit fun.
Not something you’d do hundreds of times, not least because of the fact you’d be absolutely buggered climbing up each time, but good for a number goes. There’s a trampoline that doesn’t bounce much but you can run and jump that and a number of other obstacle type things that the kids will have fun on. Probably the best thing is giant cylinder, which you can run inside like mice. Grobbler loved that.
The staff are excellent here, there’s parts of Core Hong Kong where you can pull yourself up out of the water, but kids (say 6-7 and below) might have problems getting out, but the staff help them out, and a few times they helped my rapidly ageing and aching body get out too. They’re vigilant, but you don’t get whistled at and told off, and most importantly they’re friendly and looked like they were having a good time too.
If your kids and yourself are mildly fit, book 2 hrs because the first hour goes very fast. Not too many negatives about Core Hong Kong, I guess it’s a bit steep, cost $632 for 2 of us for 2 hrs, which is not cheap, but for a once in a while activity, it’s ok. Grobbler had a ball so it was worth it but it’s not something you’d go back to every week. Only complaint I have about Core Hong Kong is the food or rather the restaurant.
We weren’t going to eat here as didn’t even know there was a restaurant, but they offered some Japanese style hot dogs, which were basically a normal hot dog with some seaweed and Japanese mayonnaise on top. Grobbler is a hot dog fanatic, so I just asked if we could have the hot dog without the sauces and seaweed, thinking, they have to make a hot dog before they sauces on, but no, couldn’t do that. For fucks sake! Is it really that difficult and would we really be putting the chef out if we saved him the time and cost of putting seaweed and sauces on a sausage and bread???? It’s this lack of common sense and refusal to be flexible that really gets my feathers ruffled.
Anyway, no biggie, Grobbler scoffed down his bacon and cheese bread thing I had bought from City Super in the car on the way home. When you see the place, you’d be a risk taker for deciding to eat there anyway, looks marginal at best even though it was all new. If I had requested something difficult, like I don’t know, Caviar on my Hot dog, I could understand, but asking the chef to miss the final steps of making a hot dog, I mean, the mind boggles sometimes!
Overall, I’d definitely recommend Core Hong Kong for you and the kids. There’s also wake boarding behind a cable available right next door but you’d need to book that too, and there’s some paddle boats you can also have a go on. The outdoor carnival area with games was half packed up and I presume something has happened to that, but that looked a bit shite anyway and would be an absolute heat wave at the best of times. There’s a wee kiosk that sells sunblock, small selection of swimwear and googles and the like in case you forget anything and there’s a small drinks kiosk that has a few chips and things.
Note that Core Hong Kong only opens during the summer so check their website for official opening days and hours.
Book your Core Hong Kong water slide tickets here, or if you have any questions about getting to Core Hong Kong or the water park in general send us en email or ask us on Twitter. For more things to do in Hong Kong, check out our Hong Kong with kids pages.
