Old Photos of Coco Key Waterpark

[FinnTheHuman]

Sup ya'll. Found these while combing through my hard drives and figured I'd throw them up since it appears that this spot is a pile of dirt now. Really unique place to explore but man, the graffiti here was just straight up trash except for the big pieces on the back wall... Anyway, RIP to one of Rockford IL's more notorious spots

[Aran]

I remember doing that back in 2019, it was easily one of Rockford's cooler locations. Back when I first explored it, we had to get in by crawling through the AC ducts like secret agents- there was a spot where someone had popped a vent loose and removed one of the filters. If you army crawled through the hole where the missing filter would have been, it opened up into a crouching height duct that ran for half a dozen meters before ending at a big grate in the wall, which someone had also removed. It was easier than it sounds, and it all felt very secret agent-like. At the time it was a little smashed up, but nothing terrible.

Unfortunately it quickly became more and more well known, and within a month someone had propped a side door open next to the tennis club. I encountered people parking right outside the the door and flying drones around inside and the amount of graffiti increased exponentially over the following month until cops began hiding around back to catch trespassers. Some fellow explorers told me they went a week before it burned and found a lot of battery-powered space heaters with open heating elements, empty gas cans, and a heavy smell of gasoline fumes inside. They speculated that the fire was arson by the owners to get around the asbestos abatement red tape and ram an emergency demolition order through the city council, because it had become such a nuisance property and was costing them too much money to secure. Sure enough, the order was granted in the aftermath of the fire and the waterpark was demolished down to its foundations within a month.

Sorry for the much lower photo quality. These are photos from when I had five years less experience as a photographer than I do now so they aren't quite up to my modern standards for my work, but it's all I've got.

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[FinnTheHuman]

Hey man never mind the quality of the photos, looks like you guys had fun and it's interesting to see the park before it was covered head to toe in spray paint! I'm also jealous of the glowing slide, I might have had the guts to go in if it was lit up like that when we visited. My girlfriend and I also took the back entrance through the ducts and even though it was "easy" I still loved the feeling of sneaking in like that. Felt legit.

Glad we both got to see it before it went up in flames.