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Park Hoppin’ with Paul Ruben
IA Swimming with fishes Discoveries on Tour
n an industry that’s always evolving I’m always looking for something I haven’t seen before. During a recent trip visiting parks in the Southeastern US I found several that caught my attention. If your park is looking for something different, you might consider one of these.
ll the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey, so what am I going to do on a winter’s day? One thing I wasn’t going do is to start singing California Dreaming by TheMamas and the Papas. No, I was
going to go to Pennsylvania’s PoconoMountains, which is best known for its skiing and other outdoor activities. I don’t ski, and I’m not going to stand outside in freezing January temperatures. I had a better idea. I was going to Kalahari Resorts Poconos where they have a giant indoor waterpark to splash around in during the day and adult beverages waiting for me in the evening. I was headed to Kalahari to experience their new underwater virtual reality
snorkeling experience, DIVR by Ballast Technologies. Read about it on pages 46 & 46. Inside the waterpark the temperature was a toasty 84º F (29º C), the perfect alternative for a winter day. While amusement parks may have a variety of low capacity attractions that can be offered for an upcharge, before now waterparks have not. DIVR changes that.
It transforms any pool into a fantastic adventure where guests can go deep sea diving, flying, or on a spacewalk. It combines the weightlessness of being in water with the immersion of virtual reality, resulting in an unprecedented full-body sensory experience. Ballast’s partner, Sub Sea Systems, is hoping to upgrade some of these systems to the DIVR+ version with thruster and sensory bubble effects. Arriving at the DIVRsite within the
One of my early stops on my tour was at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to see the new Wildwood Grove section of the park. It is themed to Dolly Parton’s childhood. “When I was a little girl growing up in the hills of the Smoky Mountains,” Parton recalled, “I’d often let my imagination just run away - something I still do now - dreaming these big dreams about what it’d be like to venture off with a family of bears into the woods or how fun it would be to hitch a ride with the butterflies and dragonflies.”
So, visitors can expect to find bears here, and they do, friendly bears that let guests meander with them at the Black Bear Trail. Black Bear Trail. Built by Metallbau Emmeln, it allows guests to hop on the back of a friendly black bear and explore. The ride system is Metallbau Emmeln’s Pony Trek system, which is found in amusement parks worldwide, but with bears rather than ponies. It’s a mild family ride. I couldn’t resist. Climbing onto the back of one of the friendly bears, shown here, I glided through the beautiful scenery, enjoying the landscape, accompanied by a joyful banjo tune.
Kalahari waterpark, I was fitted with a waterproof virtual reality mask, which consisted of two eyepieces, a large screen smart phone, speakers, and an attached snorkel to breathe through while in the water. A very helpful attendant, Nate Olsen, gave me a single-use mouthpiece that I placed on the end of the snorkel, and fitted me with a floatation belt around my waist. Tethered to an anchor at the bottom of the pool, the belt helped me keep comfortably afloat. Kalahari offered three different video experiences, with more planned in the
future. In the first I was swimming with ocean fish. I believe this is computer generated imagery, and as I turned my head left and right the scene changed appropriately. Then I thought I would test it to see if my hands and arms would appear if I waved them in front of my face; this is virtual rather than real reality, so they did not. At the end of the video I stood up and Olsen transferred a second, and later a
third video. These were fascinating, too. In one I was floating in outer space at an abandoned space station, watching the planets float by, and in the second interacted with a whale and an octopus back in the ocean. All the time there were four or five other guests in the pool, all tethered in place, enjoying their own adventures. So, what did I learn from this? For one thing, being weightless while
experiencing virtual reality enhances the experience. Second, DIVR is a sure-fire addition to any waterpark, indoors or outdoors. Third, while breathing through a snorkel tube, one should always keep the tube’s upper end above water.
In nearby Gatlinburg I stopped at Rowdy Bear Mountain Adventure Park to ride their Mountain Glider. It’s a Rollglider built by Walltopia, the first in the US. The Rollglider is a low capacity aerial ride that would require an upcharge in an amusement park. It combines the thrill of free falling and hang gliding into one ride, a cross between an inverted coaster and a zip line. There’s a lift hill leading to a twisted overhead rail. Riders sit in a harness hung below the track and are free to swing out around the turns. The two and one-half minute ride on the Mountain Glider features a 90-foot drop. At Playland’s Castaway Cove, Ocean City, New Jersey, owner Scott Simpson had completed installation of their new Squadron 33, a Technical Park Aerobat. Squadron 33 is the first Aerobat to appear in North America. “It replaced Technical Park’s Heavy Rotation ride,” Simpson told me, “which was a big thrill ride, very fast. I was looking for something better suited to our customer base. It’s an interactive ride. Guests control the planes themselves so they can just sit there, roll it back and forth, or roll it over. People love the interactivity since they can control the amount of thrill.” This is a ride that makes sense for any size park, and I expect to see more of them in future years. After 15 days on the road covering 2,000 miles, I finally returned home with lots of information, a camera full of photos, and a head filled of wonderful memories. Then reality hit as I unloaded a pile of dirty laundry.
DECEMBER 2020MARCH 2020
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