Water features give a competitive edge

By Del Williams

Adding a spray park is attracting visitors, extending stays, and raising concession sales, turning regional attractions into all-day, all-year family destinations for tourist attractions like Massachusetts’ Capron Park Zoo.

A Travel Industry Association report released earlier this year confirmed what most people in the industry already know: Travel is down, and the decline is expected to continue. The ongoing recession has made the industry’s normal challenges prove even more daunting. After all, even during good times, the visitor attractions industry is continually working to find creative solutions to challenges such as improving revenue during the off season, increasing repeat visits from local residents, or getting families to stay longer and spend more money.

Experts say inventive thinking is just as important now because recovery is often the reward of reinvestment during a recession.

“The down times are a perfect time to start planning and implementing reinvestment, and to look at ways of improving your product and the customer experience,” explains TEA (Themed Entertainment Association) president Steve Thorburn.

Many revenue-generating facilities, such as resorts or other tourist attractions, are meeting customer’s high expectations by installing indoor aquatic attractions. According to a report from the Hotel & Leisure Advisor, a national hospitality consulting firm, “As with the amusement park industry, owners and operators of indoor waterpark resorts have discovered that in order to attract new families to their facilities and keep their repeat customers coming back for more, they need to continually work to add new components and keep the concept fresh.”

What some proactive leaders in the entertainment-tourism industry are doing is adding spray parks, which feature water toys like cannons, dumping buckets, and ground sprays, to attract visitors, extend stays, and raise concession sales.  The result is helping to turn regional attractions challenged by low off-season attendance into all-day, all-year family destinations with ROI in just weeks in some cases.

“Since putting in the spray park, membership and concession sales are both up about 35 percent,” says Jean Benchimol, Director of the Capron Park Zoo in Attleboro, MA, a recreational attraction in southern New England for over 50 years.  “We’ve become an all-day destination not just locally, but also for those out of town.”

“With almost no promotion, the spray park paid for itself in ten weeks,” adds Benchimol, who includes the spray park in the price of admission.  “I’ve seen parents phone friends to tell them to come ASAP; you can’t beat word of mouth like that.  It’s increased interest in repeat visits, birthday parties, summer camps, field trips, and education programs.”


Competing for leisure dollars

“Everyone’s competing for discretionary entertainment dollars, and we wanted to be a viable contender,” says Benchimol.  “We needed to guarantee revenue during the warm months from spring to fall, when attendance can slack off if the temperatures are too high.  While staying true to our mission, we needed more entertainment value, more visits, more concession and gift sales, more word of mouth.”

Benchimol understood that when it’s hot, fewer people come and they don’t stay as long.  “To help our zoo become more family friendly, to transform it into an all-day destination for kids of all ages, we decided to add a spray park so families could cool down, refresh themselves, and stay longer.  With no standing water via a drain-away system, it’s safer and more interactive than a pool without the need for lifeguards, water wings, and such.”

After putting the project out to bid, based on price, quality, customization, and play value, Benchimol chose Waterplay Solutions Corp., a spray park and water treatment system provider based in Kelowna, Canada.

Benchimol started with the company’s online park builder, which allows users to design their own spray park with choice of venue, features, and budget constraints (www.waterplay.com/parkbuilder.php).  This helped to gain acceptance from the mayor, city council, and the zoo’s board.  The company provided step-by-step guidance and customization to suit the zoo’s wishes.

The result: Splashpad Playspace, a jungle oasis-themed spray park just inside the zoo entrance with separate areas for big and little kids.

“They made sure everything was done right,” says Benchimol.  “To accommodate us, they put the face of our prized white male lion on a water cannon, and had an elephant squirt water from his trunk into a bucket that dumps water on the kids.  The kids love it.”


Enhancing play value

Unpredictable sprayers and spillers keep the kids guessing “who’ll get wet,” which enhances the play value of the spray park.  

“Spray sequences and water pressure, and the angle of the water jets, is all controlled by a user-friendly control box,” explains Benchimol.  “Just hit a few buttons and it’s programmed.  We change spray sequences weekly to keep things fresh for repeat visitors.”

Control of the water features was put into the children’s hands via a flower-shaped activator, with a low contact point reachable to even tiny tykes.  The water features run in a 322-second sequence when someone touches the activator.  This means the spray park only operates when children actually play there, rather than running continuously during opening hours.

The result is less water and power use and less water evaporation, especially when coupled with environmentally-friendly, low-flow nozzles.  Used water drains into a fishpond, which aerates it, and irrigates nearby vegetation.

Among the big kids, battling with 180-degree swiveling water cannons is by far the favourite activity, while the little kids favour ground sprays, which give them just the control and cooling they prefer, says Benchimol.  Archie and loop bases wide enough to cruise through in a wheel chair help make the spray park fully accessible to children of all ability levels.

“Once kids see the spray park, they have to come in,” says Benchimol, who’s placed concession and gift shops nearby.  “Not only are we selling more drinks, burgers, and ice cream, but also more souvenirs, towels, sunscreen, aqua shoes, and bathing suits.  “As a service to families, we try to make everything they need readily available.”

“Parents appreciate that the spray park is enclosed with a single entrance and exit so they can keep an eye on their kids while seated on comfortable planters,” says Benchimol. For added security, flow rates, surface slope and drainage are chosen to maximize park safety.  Nozzles at ground level are flush mounted to prevent trip hazard, and tall, thick components discourage grasping, climbing, and vandalism.


Built to last

An important point to Benchimol is that the spray park is built to last and is backed up by a 25-year warranty on its features, which are constructed of stainless steel alloys. “Even though the spray park is a great part of the zoo, we wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t low-maintenance,” says Benchimol.

Because of the project’s success, the zoo is considering an expansion of the spray park in cooperation with one of the zoo’s largest donors, a McDonald’s franchise owner.  A spray park feature Benchimol has shown interest in, but not yet purchased, would allow kids to activate sound effects such as musical notes via interactive nozzles or ground sprays when water flow is blocked.

“The spray park has helped us become a household name and achieve ROI faster than we thought possible,” says Benchimol.  “It complements our family entertainment-education focus.  Any organization with similar goals should look into adding a spray park.”


Another reason to come

By any standards, Rotary Storyland & Playland, a non-profit family amusement park in Fresno, CA that’s contributed over $2 million to its community in the past 50 years, is a success.  

“But when it gets hot, attendance becomes light,” says Barry Falke, executive director of Storyland & Playland. “We were looking to give families another reason to come, especially when it gets hot.”

Rotary Storyland & Playland added a spray park designed and customized to its needs by Waterplay.  The 3,500 sq. ft. spray park with 15 features, called Splash Junction, opened recently in the center of Playland.  

The spray park builds on Playland’s train theme with a train crossing spray park activator, a dramatic water tower that dumps water on kids, and artwork of mascots Roxy and Racer on various features.  To conserve water in drought-ridden California, the spray park uses a water treatment system with a 4,000-gallon underground tank.

“The new spray park has become the focal point of Playland and has drawn a new group of visitors, along with our traditional guests who come more often and stay longer,” says Falke.  “The hotter it gets, the more people enjoy Playland and the spray park.”

“Last year’s attendance was the highest it’s ever been, due in large part to the spray park, though that’s not the only improvement we’ve made,” adds Falke.  “Visitors will ride a ride, cool down in the spray park, and repeat.”

Falke chose Waterplay in part because many of its spray park features offer a “detach and exchange” anchoring system that allows features to be easily swapped out with new components to refresh the spray park experience.  Recently, he’s added a new “Eye Spy” feature, a clear tube with a tornado of water that spins upward till it sprays out the top.

“The detach and exchange anchoring system lets us customize for the life of the spray park,” says Falke.  “It gives us layout flexibility and keeps the experience fresh for repeat visitors.  The spray park has become an attraction that kids cannot resist.  It has real, lasting appeal that we’ve wanted to add to our park for a long time.”


For more info, visit www.waterplay.com; e-mail info@waterplay.com; call 250-712-3393; fax 250-861-4814; or write to Waterplay Solutions Corp. at 1451b Ellis Street, Kelowna, BC, Canada, V1Y 2A3.

Del Williams is a technical writer based in Torrance, California.