Industry Insider


www.parkworld-online.com


Slip Slidin’ Away


Chairman and CEO of ProSlide, Rick Hunter, shares his history and thoughts on the industry in conversation with Park World’s Matt Broughton.


Rick Hunter


Matt Broughton: Tell us about your background and how you came to found ProSlide. Rick Hunter: I'm a Canadian, and in my teens was an Apline ski racer, racing in North America and Europe. I had a chance meeting with a gentleman in the Chicago airport in 1980 who noticed that I had the brand Salomon on my turtleneck. He said,  


this was a dry ride, not a water slide. He told me he needed a guy to sell slides in Canada (he turned out to be the Sales Manager in the United States out of Vermont for the Alpine Slide Company). I declined, but he was insistent I send a  That was the dry slides for summer recreation in winter ski areas, but they


were also getting into the water slide business back in 1980. So I worked for them for five years and was very busy in North America because the water park industry really grew up there. So from 1980 to 1985 I worked with Alpine, and then had the chance to start my own business in 1986, so I started ProSlide in 1986 and have been busy for 38 years now, designing and developing water rides all over the world.


MB: What would you say has changed the most about the industry since you started ProSlide? RH: The good news about when I started the company was that there were





“In the last 21 years at IAPPA, we've  17 out of 21 years”


not that many water rides yet. There were single body slides, serpentine speed slides, vertical curves, and there were two person tubing rides. And that's really all there was back in the early 80s. Not only was the timing interesting to be there in the 80s, but in fact there was an opportunity to expand the ride profiles and really get into innovation. I didn't realise at the time, but with my ski racing   innovation, innovation. The big change was going from something two meters wide for two people


to four meters wide for six people. I was in a position to create the world's first  it went viral all over the United States. That really helped ProSlide go from one of fifteen companies to one of the top three. After that we could do dark mammoths, but innovation was everywhere. It was speed slide innovations,    time, we always better our best rides in the category, and that's what's fuelled the growth and the success of ProSlide.


JUNE 2024


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