How did water parks develop

For many children, and even those young at heart, water parks are a key pastime of summer and, increasingly, winter, with indoor parks now developed in many areas. The history of water parks is generally relatively recent, particularly after World War II when they became popular, but they have evolved rapidly in the last few decades from simple places of amusement to complex parks that compete for status symbols such as the 'largest water park' or 'tallest waterslide'.

Early History

In the late 1940s, with the country recovering from World War II and beginning to contemplate more fun as normal life resumed, the United States began to look for new amusements. Many outdoor pools and lidos had existed already but only a few had diving boards. Even fewer had slides. However, by the late 1940s more pools began to integrate slides and even began to include water being incorporated into the slide to easy movement down towards the pool. Although this is often seen as the beginning of water parks, the waterslide appears to have first developed in New Zealand during the 1906 International Exhibition. In an exhibition called "Wonderland," a chute was installed that allow swimmers to slide right into the pool. The chute moved people down in a wooden ramp that then allowed them to briefly skim across the surface of the water, as it came in a slight angle. Already in 1906, even government officials, such as the speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives, was impressed and gave the slide a try.

Perhaps the first document waterslide in the United States was in Faribault, Minnesota, created by furniture maker Herbert Sellner in 1923. He created what was a water toboggan slide that would have riders going on a wooden sled and then slide into the water, skimming the surface. Similar slides were built through the late 1920s and a few parks in the United States began to have slides. Most of the slides were based on Sellner's original design. Most slides simply allowed one to go to the top, get on a sled, and then go off in a slight angle towards the water.

Later Developments

George Millay, who famously founded Sea World in San Diego and later Florida, took the idea developed by Sellner and also increasingly noticed in the 1960s and 1970s incorporating splash pads and the first wavepool opening in Alabama. Waterslides became very popular within existing parks, so much so long lines were always evident. All these gave Millay the idea that a purpose-built water park might be enough to be profitable. He needed a warm, year-round place to have such a park to keep revenues steady. As Orlando, Florida already hosted well known amusement locations and had the weather that Millay needed, Wet n’ Wild was founded there as the first purpose-built water park in 1977. When it opened, the first year proved disappointing, loosing about $600,000. However, Millay did not fret and from the second year it began to make a profit. Although the park closed in 2016, it became the blueprint for most other parks in the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia. Demonstrating the success of the park, Wet n'Wild averaged about 1.3 million visitors a year in its later years. Millay took the Wet n' Wild brand to many areas and other countries, expanding the brand and building new ater parks.

Since the 1970s, there has been a rapid expansion and often competition among parks to develop new types of slides, rides, pools and even novel features within water parks. For instance, for northern regions of the United States, where the weather is too cold for much of the year for water parks, a novel feature has been creating an ice skating rink in the main plaza by placing underground cooling pipes. By the early 1980s, communities around the United States began to realize that they could make their area more appealing to tourists by building water parks. This was the case for Wisconsin Dells in southern Wisconsin, not far from Chicago. In that case, five major water parks were built near each other, allowing the town to claim itself as the 'water park capital' of the world. This inspired not only new water parks to be built across the country, where today there are more than 400 water parks in the United States. Routinely, water parks became ranked across the United States, with other countries sometimes following. This has helped to inspire the explosion of innovation in waterslides, rides, attractions within water parks.