It may be winter outside, but Michael Chantler likes to remind everyone that it's always summer inside of Adventure Bay Family Water Park.

This week, the local indoor water park, run by the City of Windsor, is filled with happy swimmers, looking to get away from the arctic blast that has hit the area in recent weeks.

"It's really exciting," Chantler said. "This is a gem in our city. To have it home for March Break for everyone to enjoy is absolutely wonderful. Not just the residents of Windsor, we are getting a lot of people from out of town."

Despite the obvious excitement, some are disappointed that the park is only open from 12 noon to 4 p.m.

"It's kind of annoying. We're from out of town," Jennifer Shank, of Ridgetown, said. "We drove through the crappy weather to be here and it's super busy. They have to cram all of the people that want to be here in a four-hour time slot. It makes it pretty crowded."

Maria Kyslenko loves to enjoy Adventure Bay. She agrees about the short hours.

"The long lines waiting for slides, especially for March break," said. "I like it here. The only thing I don't like is there are too many people at a time."

Chantler said the reason for fewer hours of operation is a perfect storm creating less staff. Between high school student staff that are on March break holidays with their own families, as well as exams and final papers due for the university students, staffing shifts has been tough.

Chantler said they are also still feeling the effects of COVID-19, and the shutdowns that happened as a result.

"During the pandemic we had nobody going into our leadership courses," Chantler said. "And when you have nobody going in leadership courses for two years, you are going to have that void. It will continue to be a problem for us. But March break is always tough to staff."

Ronald and Kim Bourque from Sarnia knew about the times ahead of time. They were just happy to take their grandchildren for some fun in the water.

"It's great for us. We come from Sarnia so we've taken the grandkids here for a couple of nights on March Break," Ronald Bourque said. "We think it's great to have some activity for them. Four hours is lots of time for these kids."