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Water-Park Craze Escalates With Newer, Bigger Resorts and Rides

Posted on: Thursday, 26 May 2005, 21:06 CDT

If Kevin Costner invested in water parks instead of the $175 million spent on the 1995 film "Waterworld," he might be having lunch with Bill Gates right now.

Theme parks, hotels and resorts are rapidly answering the call for mega-slides, lazy rivers, wave pools, aquatic playgrounds for tots and Green Giant-sized pails of water that dump on unsuspecting water nymphs below. While a mere swimming pool might satisfy the age- 3-and-younger set, water parks are the "it" amenity for traveling families.

Even the resorts in Wisconsin Dells, the Poseidon of the water- park craze, have to keep upping the ante year after year.

Great Wolf Lodge's latest attraction, the $3 million Howlin' Tornado, recently joined the indoor water park's 10 water slides, seven pools, lazy river and four-story treehouse water fort. Calling it the first enclosed ride of its type in the world, the Tornado is a six-story-tall extreme water-tubing ride that was too big to fit inside the 64,000-square-foot indoor entertainment area. A heated, enclosed stairwell was built to lead riders to the top of a giant funnel. The ride won the Best New Waterpark Product Award last year at the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions annual convention. Check it out at www.greatwolflodge.com or call (800) 559-9653.

The Wilderness Hotel and Golf Resort, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year in Wisconsin Dells, offers two great new slides opening for summer: the Hurricane and Cannonbowl. The Hurricane is a four-person dark tube and steep chute ride while Cannonbowl takes two guests through a tunnel, then speeds them into a gigantic bowl where they spin around, corkscrew and drop into a landing pool below.

Illustrating the burgeoning water-park phenomenon, when Wilderness opened 10 years ago, the resort offered 75 rooms with one outdoor and one indoor water park. This summer, you can choose from 443 guest rooms, condos, villas and cabins, three indoor water parks and two outdoor water parks. Frequent promotions and online deals keep families coming. Go to www.wildernessresort.com or call (800) 867-9453.

Families will have a new Illinois destination option when Grizzly Jack's Grand Bear Lodge opens in July. The $90 million project hopes to lure families from yearly Dells' visits with the state's first indoor water park resort built next to Starved Rock State Park in Utica. The water park includes a 240-foot-long waterslide, wave pool, lazy river, island with a dumping bucket, children's slide, a pool for tots and what is being called "America's first motion and sound adventure waterslide." Four stories high, the slide incorporates color and sound along with a heart-pounding plunge.

Accommodations vary from rooms and suites in a three-story log lodge, villas that can sleep up to 10 people and log cabins (still under construction) that can host up to 18 water-crazed family members. Add the family restaurant, bar, gift shop, outdoor playground, convenience store, 18-hole miniature golf course, ice cream and candy shop, coffee and pastry shop, arcade, and banquet and meeting facilities and Grizzly Jack's should give the Dells a run for our money.

Expect an indoor amusement park with 10 full-size rides and carnival games, a pizzeria and full-service spa to add to the experience in Utica in the year to come. For more information, call (866) 399-3866 or swim over to www.grandbearlodge.com.

Around the Midwest and the nation, the Best Western chain boasts 88 percent of its hotels having pools and/or indoor and outdoor water parks. So far, the chain's water parks are better suited for kids younger than 12, such as the Best Western Sterling Inn in the Detroit suburb of Sterling Heights, Mich., with an Interactive Splash Play Park designed for kids who are less than 48 inches tall, zero-depth-entry swimming pool with a three-story water slide, lazy river, two large whirlpools and a poolside snack bar.

Call (800) 780-7234 or visit www.bestwestern.com for reservations and details.

Source: Daily Herald; Arlington Heights, Ill.

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