WATERPARKS
Sydney’s newest leisure attraction off ers world class water rides and has 10 per cent of the population living within a 20-minute drive time. Julie Cramer fi nds out more about the thrills in store for visitors
Julie Cramer, journalist, Attractions Management
N 74
ot since the opening of the Olympic stadium in 1999 has there been such an exciting, large-scale leisure development to service the Sydney metro- politan area, according to Chris
Warhurst, general manager of the new Wet ‘n’ Wild waterpark in Sydney. Opened in December 2013 in Prospect,
the new leisure development took 12 months to construct and lays claim to being the world’s biggest waterpark, with more than 42 rides and attractions. “We have the world’s fi rst combination aqua loop and mat racer tower, the world’s tallest Double SkyCoaster (a daring 250ft dry ride tower) and one of the world’s largest surf wave pools,” says Warhurst. “When you’re travelling at 120km an hour on our SkyCoaster – which at 75m is 10m higher than the sails on the Sydney Opera House – falling to earth and pulling 3Gs, you really know you’re alive. It’s terrifyingly wonderful,” he adds.
WET ‘N’ WILD SYDNEY
Proslide’s Bombora drops riders 15m before they surf up the face of a monster wave
Impressive numbers The waterpark, which cost AUS$135m (US$125m, E90.4m, £74.4M) to construct, is expecting to attract up to one million visitors per full season (from September to April each year) and judging by the numbers that have raced through its doors since last December, it’s well on target to achieve this. “The park is built to handle between 15,000 and 20,000 visitors a day and we’ve certainly been seeing those numbers since we launched,” says Warhurst. “We opened on December 12th and by December 19th we’d sold 180,000 season passes.” The park’s location in the most densely populated metropolitan area of Australia (25km from CBD – Sydney central business district) is helping to feed those numbers, although Warhurst’s hoping to put the park on the interstate and inter- national tourist map as well – with an expectation that around 20 per cent of visitors will come from this segment.
Read Attractions Management online
attractionsmanagement.com/digital He says: “We’re just 10 minutes away
from the Olympic site and 2.5 million Australians live within a 20-minute drive of our park. With a national population of 25 million, that’s one in 10 Australians who can easily access the park. ‘We’ve designed the park to attract
Sydney’s different market segments, but we’ve also had visitors from as far afi eld as the UK and South America. “The traditional tourist pathway in
Sydney is the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, but there’s no reason why Wet ‘n’ Wild can’t also be on that map. We’re just 35 minutes from Sydney Airport’s international terminal.”
Ride selection Once through the doors, it’s unlikely that visitors will be disappointed with the array of wet attractions on offer. The park’s owners, Village Roadshow, awarded equal mega tower contracts to waterpark suppliers Whitewater West and
AM 2 2014 ©Cybertrek 2014
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