Enchanted Island Amusement Park – Review

For a 2021 review of Enchanted Island, read this blog post.

Take the kids for an afternoon at Enchanted Island, the amusement park located in the Encanto Lagoon. It’s a small but fun-filled place built just for the younger kids—if you have children aged ten and under, the rides and assorted amusements at Enchanted Island are well worth a visit.

If you’re looking for a ride the whole family can enjoy (and fit into), a good place to start is the C.P. Huntington Train, a ⅓-scale replica of Southern Pacific’s locomotive #1. It’ll take you on a seven-minute loop around the entire park, showing you everything else there is to try out in the meantime. Arizona’s oldest continually-operating carousel also calls Enchanted Island home, and is another ride for all ages.

Kids more than 42″ tall can join Mom and Dad on the Parachute Tower and get another view of the park—this time from above. The Rock ‘n’ Roll is another ride for kids and adults that’ll send you whirling, but most of the rides have maximum height restrictions. Kids can take a spin in mini cars, planes, boats and spaceships, or ride the back of a dragon on a not-too-scary roller coaster.

There’s other fun things to do, too. The Splash Zone adds some aquatic fun for children too young for a real waterpark, while the Castle Clash game pits family members against each other in a water-cannon duel. The series of coin-operated games that give prizes with every play are another hit with the kids, and the snack bar is a place to grab an ice cream sandwich or a bag of popcorn while enjoying the park.

The amusement park actually is on an island, and with water on all sides you’ll have to try the pedal boats before you go. The boats are mostly available for rental only on weekends (with a few exceptions) and kids under the age of two aren’t allowed on board, but it can be an enjoyable bit of family teamwork, pedaling around the park perimeter.

Getting There

Enchanted Island
1202 W. Encanto Blvd.
Phoenix, AZ 85007

Interested in learning more? Here’s another review we wrote about Enchanted Island.