If you’re headed out to Western New York and will be anywhere near Batavia, Polar Waves is a small local business that provides fun, safe snowtubing experiences for people of all ages! The question is, is it worth the money to go, do they really do everything they say they do on the site, and what are the pros/cons of the location?
The first thing everybody wants to know is how much it costs to go. For 2-3 hours of fun, it’s fairly cheap considering how much it costs to go snowboarding or skiing. The price range varies depending on age and length. There are four different prices for snow tubing. If you’re an adult you could pay either 13 dollars for 2 hours or 15 dollars for 3 hours. If your child is attending, the cost will be 9 dollars for 2 hours and 11 dollars for 3 hours. Group pricing varies and needs to be called about, for my group, it was 2 dollars off each for 2 hours. If you buy your ticket it’s 1 dollar off at a local Wegmans.
When I attended Polar Wave Snow tubing, the steps we followed were:
1. We arrived and parked in their parking lot which was a good size for such a small business.
2. Went to the ticket window which is not adjacent to the parking lot but rather on the opposite side of the building. you can walk through the dining area to get to the ticket booth though. (Dining area is heated)
3. Pay for the ticket and got a tag to confirm that we had indeed paid. Ours was orange and it was an indication for 2 hours of snow tubing. Put that on your front zipper and get ready to gear up!
4. Going to get the tubes which was in an abandoned truck was easy. Using the ring that they use to drag the tubes up to the lift I dragged it along and handed the ring to the person operating the lift and sat in the tube.
5. Rode the tube up to the sign where it says “Roll off” and rolled off the tube as they grabbed my tube off the lift and allowed me to get my tube from them.
6. Rode the tube down the pass and then repeated steps 4 and 5. You have up to 5 lanes to pick from and each of them are unique. If you want to tube as a group you can and it adds more speed and distance to your tubing experience.
Over all the passes are fun, a bit freaky but fun. There were some things that I was not impressed with. While I was there, both sides of the lift broke to the point where we had to drag our own tubes up. So much for the “luxurious tubing experience” that I expected with their comments that we wouldn’t have to carry our tubes up the hill to go back down.
When we were freezing we went into the dining section of the building and it was suitable for people just coming from outside. It was fairly warm and was being heated by a older heating set up. The food choices were not that good for somebody that’s looking for healthy food. If you’re a vegetarian plan on eating their macaroni and cheese or cheese pizza. The only other thing available for people that don’t eat meat were the fries and pretzels. They did have hotdogs, pizza, and soda/pop.
This location accepts only cash for food which is an issue these days since we don’t really carry cash. If you wanted to bring in outside food it is not allowed so keep things in your car and if you intend on eating your own food, plan on going back to your car and eating but remember you are limited to 2 or 3 hours.
To summarize my ratings for this place I would give it 4 out of 5 stars mainly because they do have the lifts and they do try to keep the lifts running. If the lifts break, they’ll work to get them in working order as soon as they can. They also have two lanes on the lift so that helps. Their food choices aren’t healthy but that’s normal for a location like this.
