The U.S. National Whitewater Center opened in Charlotte in 2006 and has been “dedicated to the promotion of the active lifestyle” ever since. The center features the world’s largest man-made whitewater river but has so much more to offer. With dozens of land and water based activities, there is something for everyone here.
We visited the Whitewater Center for the first time in 2008 with RB in a baby carrier and Wrigley on a leash. We explored some of the trails and fell in love with the place. It was amazing to us that this mecca of outdoor activity existed just 30 minutes from uptown Charlotte.
Over the years we’ve visited numerous times with the kids for everything from music festivals to 4th of July fireworks to simply meeting friends for a picnic dinner. It is a great place to explore or just relax (or watch people get ejected from their rafts!). The facility and surroundings are beautiful.
But after years of passive enjoyment, the kids are finally old enough to try out some of the activities. The Whitewater Center activities are broken down into the following categories: whitewater, flatwater, climbing, zip lines, ropes courses, jumps, and trails. Each activity (other than hiking) has either an age or a weight qualifier. You can buy a pass to a single activity or a day pass to all activities that you qualify for. The single activity pass is literally one turn on one activity for $25. This may be worthwhile for some of the individual water activities like rafting, but it is a terrible deal for the land activities. If you have any interest in zip lines or ropes courses (or more than one activity in general), go for the full day pass ($59 for adults and $49 for kids 9 and younger).
The kids have watched people zip line overhead for years and were so excited to give it a try. Of course the biggest ones have a 70 pound minimum, which neither of them is especially close to reaching, so we were limited to the two smaller lines in the Canyon Zip. They were excited to gear up and give it a try.
The zip lines were relatively short but the kids loved them. It was fun for them to fly over the woods. Maybe this experience will motivate them to become better eaters so they can hit the weight minimum for the longer zips soon!
Next we did a few of the ropes courses in The Ridge and The Canyon sections. The boys were height/weight eligible to do any of the ropes courses and really enjoyed them. JB still struggled a little at the exchanges – he was a little too short to easily transfer the two carabiners from one belay point to another. But once he got going on each of the ropes sections, he really enjoyed them.
The surprise of the visit was that the boys wanted to try one of the jumps. For the Ridge Jump, they had to use rock climbing holds to scale a 30 foot tall pole. When they got to the top they had to climb onto the platform and then jump off. The jump itself was not very exciting – there was little to no free-fall time before the safety ropes kicked in and lowered you very slowly to the ground. But it was still really fun for the kids (and adults – I did it too!). People were cheering them on from the ground as they climbed so they had a major sense of accomplishment when they made it to the top.
All in all, we had a great day exploring the land activities at the Whitewater Center. I highly recommend it for kids in the elementary school age range. There are enough activities to keep the kids busy and challenge them to try new things and push their limits a little. We are looking forward to going back next summer when JB is 8 and meets the minimum age for Family Rafting. The WWC is a great family outing – it is fun for all ages and has different levels of activities that grow along with your kids.
