The discount tickets we will be using for our trip next year include one extra attraction: water parks, mini-golf, golf or ESPN. The water parks seem like they would be the best value, but I have two toddlers, and I am not sure that makes sense for them. How would you use this extra attraction ticket? We will be hanging out extra days while one of us is at a conference, so time is not the problem.
I haven’t been to either in several years but have done both water park and mini golf with preschoolers. I will share my take on both.
I took a 3 and 5 year old to the water park by myself (DH was at a conference that day) and we had a great time. We went to Typhoon Lagoon and I found a few chairs in the smallest kids area and we stayed there for several hours. That area actually has a must be under this height so it is really designed for little, little ones. None of it is very deep and the slides are short but fun for little ones. The area also has lots of sand so they can just dig away. My DD spend over an hour digging in the sand while DS napped on a lounge chair. I chilled with a book. It was a really nice change from the run, run of the theme parks. I did not do any of the big slides but we did go on one of the family tube slides and hit the lazy river but mostly hung out in the kids area for the day. I think we were there for 4-5 hours. Kids meals there come in sand buckets (at least they did) and had shovels attached so they had built in sand toys as a bonus:)
The next trip we went miniature golfing instead and at 4 and 6 they still struggled with hitting the ball and then got frustrated. We still had fun but if it had been warmer (unseasonably cold November day). I would have opted for the water park instead. Mini golf took about 1 hour of play time but 45 minutes of waiting for out turn to start. Only a small snack bar available with things like chips and candy bars not real food.
I think that the water park is a better value even with small kids then mini golf but both are fun.
Thank you for this super helpful response. That was just the kind of insight I was hoping to get.
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Glad I could help. Have fun on your trip
I agree with @combatjulie, I’d do the water park rather than the other options listed. I did Blizzard Beach last year with DD (3) and DS (5). DS liked the bigger family tube ride, but DD only liked the kiddie area. There was no sand, but there was a large splash area, very shallow water, and some little slides. One was even a toddler-sized tube slide. It took DD quite a while to work up to that one 
There’s also a “tween” area I went to with DD. We didn’t do any of the “tween” attractions, but she really liked the pool there. If I recall it was a zero entry pool. We spent quite a while splashing around.
This year we’re staying at a deluxe and we’re planning on just spending a resort day at the pool. The more limited water options will be worth it to us to save the extra 1-2 hours transportation time on the busses to and from the water park. Plus we’d have to pay for the water park ticket out of pocket.
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Great! Thank you.