Wahii WaterSlide 75' x 12' - World's Biggest Backyard Lawn Water Slide

This is a lot of fun for the kids, and a great party tool, but there's a lot of aggravation in using it that you should be aware of before purchasing.SETUP: First time, leave yourself about 1.5 hours to set up. You'll need to take it out of the packaging, figure out placement, lay it out, attach the tabs and stakes, and then set up the sprinkler in the right position. Subsequent setups take about half as long.USE: This does NOT work with water alone. Repeat: you cannot slide on this with just water. Have to also squirt on some softsoap or dishwashing detergent. With the detergent, slides great, but you have to add more periodically. A problem with the detergent/soap is that where it washes off at the end, you'll get a big dead spot in your grass. Also, some of the tabs will fall off while you're using it (no matter how much duck tape you use). If it's not windy, and only a few come off, no big deal. If it is windy, or you lose a bunch of tabs, have to stop to reattach the tabs.CLEANUP: This takes awhile, since you have to dry both sides before you fold it up, to prevent mildew. So leave it staked and let it dry when you're done, then drag it to a dry spot on the lawn, flip it, and let the back dry. After that, fold it along the short side twice, then roll it up. You'll want to keep a beach towel handy while you're rolling it, to get the last few drops of water. So make sure you start the cleanup process at least three hours before daylight ends, to leave time for drying both sides and rolling. (Folding and rolling takes a good twenty minutes, since it's 75 feet long. Not a bedsheet!) Don't leave it out overnight, or you'll get dew on it (and possibly bird poop) and will have to start over.STORAGE: Make sure you store it in a dry place rodents can't access. We left it in our outdoor shed over the winter, and some mice got in it and chewed some holes.All in all, I don't regret buying this. It has been fun, for two seasons now, but it's a fair amount of effort to use. Sometimes I'm tempted to just turn on a sprinkler instead.

We host many events in our neighborhood, but none can touch the popularity of this enormous slip and slide. We make a BBQ pot luck luau event out of it. Hundreds come! No really.. hundreds! Families bring picnic blankets and sometimes even go down the slide together on a tube or air mattress. It has been so much of a success that I had to order a second one just in case something happened to the first. We're on the third year running, and we haven't had to take the second one out of the box!One of the things I would have appreciated was some additional instruction on how to set this up and tear it down. Here's what I've learned.THE HILLAs the video shows, our hill doesn't go the full stretch. Half of the slide is on a steep hill and the other half went into a retention area behind our house. That's still plenty of thrill and speed to go down the slide and fly off the edge of the slide. Folks loved it!WATER SPRINKLERSWe used two different Gilmour oscillating sprinklers (hung one from a tree at the start to create a waterfall effect and one at the end). The one at the start had settings to let me control the width of the spray (very helpful) as well as the direction the sprinkler would oscillate in (I used the setting to lock it in one direction so it wouldn't oscillate). This provided enough water to both get people wet as they stepped on and also provide all the water needed to flow down the slide. The oscillating sprinkler at the base only had settings to control which direction the spray flowed. I set the settings to just oscillate in the area where the base of the slide was and nothing else. I got both sprinkler's at Lowe's.ADDITIONAL WATER OPTIONSI used a CHAMELEON™ Hose End Sprayer (filled with Johnson & Johnson tear free soap) to help keep the slide slippery and help make the soap go a long way... i only needed THREE soap bottles from our grocery store. I would either spray the start of the slide before each rider or just spray the kids. I never kept it on all the time... just used it when needed. It was very low pressure and really controlled the amount of soap used (not too heavy). I also had a hand held water hose sprayer to spray off kids from dirt from running back up the hill.WATER HOSESIf you've been doing your math, that's a total of 4 water hose connections, which were fed from two different main hose spickets from the house... each connected to a two way splitter (creating the 4 water hoses). Remember, when you divide a water hose, the pressure divides with it. Surprisingly, water hose 1 did not affect water hose 2's pressure. On the first water hose, I had the oscillating sprinkler (mentioned above) that was always on and the hand held sprayer which wasn't always on. That way the sprinkler would have full pressure most of the time. The second hose was done similarly with the second oscillating sprinkler and the hose end soap sprayer.SOAPLike mentioned above, we used Johnson's tear-free soap. It REALLY helped to keep the slide slippery and really keeps the kids eyes from becoming irritated. We used Dawn dish soap on the first year and it got into the kids eyes (possibly from rubbing their own eyes), so you may want to definitely consider the tear-free option. It will really go the long way if you use it with the above mentioned Hose End Sprayer, as that helped keep the soap conserved.WATER CONSUMPTIONWe used anywhere from 2,500-3,000 gallons of water over a 5 hour span. That's really not a whole lot since the oscillating sprinklers were conserving water on their own. I know the consumption because we have little water measurement tools that we got from Amazon to monitor it. Surprisingly, the utility company charged us about $28 for the event (didn't charge wastewater charges, phew) since I think they just considered it the same amount of water used for lawn sprinklers. We don't use our lawn sprinklers at all, so maybe that's a factor.SAFETY MEASURESOn the start of the hill we used a regular tarp for the prep area. It was VERY helpful so kids wouldn't be bringing grass/dirt onto the slide. I could hose off the tarp to keep it clean. The slide came with "U" anchors to secure the slide, but for extras like on the starting tarp, I used metal clothes hangers cut into four 1-foot strips. I folded those into U anchors to anchor the tarp (hammered into the 4 corners). I also stayed at the start of the slide and told kids "GO" when the slide was safe for starting.SETUPYou will need Gorilla Duct Tape!! The directions even suggest it. The slide comes with many "U" anchors that utilize the duct tape so the slide can stretch under pressure. Do not hammer the included stakes into the slide as that will definitely tear the slide. The directions are pretty clear on how to set the anchors up. Be sure to water (and soap) the slide thoroughly before anyone slides. The directions, again, are pretty helpful. I try to wait until there was shade over most of the slide because the hot sun can REALLY make that slide dry AND OVEN HOT no matter how much water you put on it.TEAR DOWNYou can do this yourself (I've done it myself already). It's better to have help as that can speed things up. When done, I put the slide sideways on the hill so that all the water can run off. I left the duct tape on (didn't seem to do any harm). I rinsed the soap off that way and then flipped the whole thing and rinsed again. I let the sun dry the whole thing (took 30 min) and then flipped and let it dry the other side (another 30 min). This will help avoid mildew. When dry, I folded it longways in thirds (fold the left side [a third?] to the half mark, then the right side the same way, then the hole thing in half). Then I rolled the whole thing up and put it in an extra large heavy duty duffle bag (48"x20"- also, Amazon).CONCLUSIONIt's not as hard as it looks and as I described. We bought this thing in 2015 and used it twice that year. Then used it once in 2016. Has a few stretch marks from the Gorilla tape pulling at it. When it rips (kids going down can do that), I just add some gorilla tape under the rip (on the under part of the slide) and that's it. A great buy!

We love this toy! We have set it up for end of the year baseball parties and have practiced "sliding". We have used for neighborhood parties, we have used it for just our kids on a hot day. It is not a last minute thought, it takes planning and set up.As the summer progressed last year we got better at using it. Each time we would tweak the loacation, the hose, we bought cheap tubes to use on it. We have a rather large hill and use baby soap. It seems to get rid of the friction rather well. It also cleans the children. We require our kids to wear shirts because they do get cut from the grass if they go too quickly.This is your fair warning--adults will not want to do this at first. After a few "juice boxes" they want to do it and will wake up sore the next day. We have enjoyed this toy many times and so have our friends.If we know we will get storms, we set it up because a downpour is better than any hose will ever be.

This is a great time waiting to happen. I've used ours twice now. We live in a big neighborhood and everyone stops to check it out because it's so big and the kids are always having a great time. The only reason it doesn't get 5 stars is because the staples at the top always seem to rip through eventually. Those that complain about the tape not sticking may not be putting it on while it's dry. I used Gorilla tape with the little white tabs and none of them came off. The secret is putting them on before turning on ANY water.As a note, your local hardware store sells the exact same thing for about 1/3 the cost. It's just a polyvinyl sheet. You could buy it there and some landscaping staples and you'd be set.