BLOGS

Latest trends to increase visitor traction

A successful waterpark is much more than a bunch of slides handpicked from a brochure and put together in a space. It takes meticulous planning and combining the right elements to give a flow to your visitors in order to make it memorable for them and profitable for park owners. A well-developed waterpark will truly raise the experience level and spending potential of the visitor and significantly add to any park’s bottom line!

So when designing a waterpark, the underlying focus of a park should be on differentiating itself from the other parks within the common catchment area. And how does one do that when the industry offers more or less the same 25-30 products portfolio for a certain region? In the age of Facebook/Insta Posts how do you ensure you park is uniquely recognized even when user doesn’t tag it? How do you make the experience memorable?

Well the key lies in Characterization and theming!

Storytelling is central to human existence, cognition and communication. We use stories to make sense of our world and to share that understanding with others. A study suggests, so powerful is our impulse to detect story patterns that we see them even when they’re not there. This is a universal phenomenon that personifies elements, events thus shaping memories. Its visualization!

So how does this personification and storytelling work towards shaping a successful park?

Themes for long have been known to create an atmosphere of another place and time. It gives a story to remember and registers at a faster pace with the visitors than a normal ride. Would Star Wars: Hyperspace Mountain Ride (formerly the Space Mountain Mission Ride) at Disneyland Paris, create the same impact had it not been for the planets and mystery of space that the ride took you through!

Story telling through theming gives your guests a chance to experience an attraction like never before through multi-sensory stimulation. You can forget a ride but not the experience and how it made you feel!

Keeping up with the trend, we at Arihant have a host of current best-selling products that speak story and theme to your guest. You can customize it to suit your park needs –

• Plug N Play: A path-breaking concept where you could easily replace the theme on your water play structures. Easily re-theme the water play structure to keep surprising your guests. Bring your guests in back for a new feel in the new season
• Treasure Ship: A multi-level lifelike and larger than life themed play structure! This is the perfect family themed slide play structure which has something for everyone.
• Bay Series: Winner of ‘The Economic Times Polymer Award 2019’, this humongous slide is one of its kind 6 seater and amplifies the ride experience with a record breaking 8-10 oscillations
• Themed Crusader: Winner of ‘The Economic Times Polymer Award 2020’, this giant takes its inspiration from the various natural elements incorporating it with the slide which takes the ride experience to another level. Themes with butterfly, Cobra, Leopard, Wave Surfer have been clients favorite

Arihant has always worked towards creating the clients vision into reality. For the same we have developed themes as per the clients brief, needs and positioning. To cite an example, a park in India wanted to create a feel of Heaven in their upcoming waterpark which is also named ‘’Heaven waterpark’’.  Based on our data, that the most time spent by visitors in a park is in a Waterplay structure, we overturned the entire play structure into a ‘’Heaven Lookalike’’ What followed was a process to create a visually appealing ‘Slice of Heaven’. Similarly, a park in Srilanka, wanted to bring in the speed and rush of Car Racing in the waterpark. Arihant, based on client’s requirement, designed a unique car racing themed Waterplay structure to address the client’s requirements.

Today most of the water park owners make it a point that their parks are well equipped with the latest slides and play structures and focus only on the safety. But often maintenance of these exciting slides is ignored by park operators which can invariantly decrease their return on investment.

Proper maintenance of your water park is the most vital element to extend the life of your water park equipment. Keeping a check of the slide maintenance with appropriate planning can prevent your equipment from losing their luster and patrons over time.

The best way to keep your slide looking great for years is to start protecting it from day one. Put together a schedule which includes details of ordering parts, organizing labor and planning out important dates for checks. This will allow you to stay organized and ensure that you don’t miss out on anything.

Here are some benefits of regular maintenance:

• It increases the life expectancy of water park equipment
• It reduces the repair costs over the years
• It optimizes the operational overheads
• It helps in increasing the return on investment by saving you money
• It minimizes the chances of injury and poor park experience

Besides, cleaning all surfaces, pools, slides, or other equipment will ensure that slime doesn’t develop. This helps in keeping things clean, and also reduces the chances of accidental slips and subsequent injuries. Read further to know the easiest way to maintain your park. For a detailed free maintenance manual fill this form and we shall email it to you

To make it easier for you to maintain your water park, we have prepared the below list of tips:

1. Remove Any Stagnant Water from the Lines

Since this one is easy to miss, we mention this first. It is also one of the most important maintenance tasks. Even after a lot of cleaning, condensation and seepage can aid the collection of stagnant water in the system. That’s why it is important to address this right away.

2. Check the Chemicals in the Tank

It is vital to conduct quality testing and maintain chemical stability according to local health guidelines. This will minimize any nasty surprises that may come your way.

3. Run a Systems Check

You must make sure that you run fresh water through all water park equipment before opening for park. And again, after making any repairs or adjustments, it is imperative to ensure that the flow remains consistent and meets equipment specifications. You should also attend to this task beforehand so you will have enough time to fix any problems and retest the system.

4. Check for Leaks

Before and after the systems check, carefully inspect lines and joints for leaks. Be vigilant of any pooling or standing water near lines or equipment.

5. Pressurize the Lines

Usually, the water you get from municipal sources has a higher pressure than required for your equipment. That’s why you must first transfer that water to balancing tanks and check if the flow control valves are working the way they are supposed to. And if they are offering the right operating pressure to later transfer to the slides.

6. Conduct a Safety Check for all Water Toys

Keep a close eye on every piece of water park equipment and look for signs of wear and tear, holes, cracks, and chips on play surfaces. You should also check if all joints are tightened and if all water supply filters are free from debris or blockages.

7. Check Electrical Systems

This is especially important as a problem with electrical systems can potentially electrocute someone. So, ensure that all electrical lines, control panels, connections, and surrounding areas are dry and other safety measures are in place.

We hope that these tips will prove useful the next time you do maintenance for your water park.

Is it a park with quality rides, high safety standards or great guest experience? At Arihant all of that is in our DNA! A successful waterpark is much more than a bunch of slides handpicked from a brochure and put together in a space. It takes meticulous planning and combining the right elements to give a flow to your visitors in order to make it memorable for them and profitable for park owners. A well-developed waterpark will truly raise the experience level and spending potential of the visitor and significantly add to any park’s bottom line!

Operating our own waterpark for 24 years has given us added insight into this business. These insights along with valuable feedback from our clients on visitor demands forms the basis of some of our slide designs helping us deliver industry leading ROI to the smart park investor.

Arihant has being developing parks that are not just pretty looking but are also commercially viable giving two-fold results to clients. In order to build a successful waterpark we encourage promoters to first ask themselves the ’Big 4’:

1. Which age group does my audience fit into? – This will help you define the ride mix
2. What is the expected turnout at the park? – This will help you optimize the design of waterpark and maximize the ROI
3. What socio-economic category does my audience belong? – This will help you define the revenue projections
4. What will attract my audience? – This will help you define the story for the park and weave a theme for slides

Parks are long term investment and efforts should circle towards sustaining the hype of the park. Hence while shortlisting a manufacturer for park slides, the 4 fold focus should be on quality, longevity of slides, Ride experience and Value for money. All of 4 aspects are crucial in ensuring higher returns for any park. The rides should encompass selection of fun and thrill slides in order to address the diverse set of customers.

The key difference between a bigger waterpark and a medium sized format is that in bigger waterpark there are clear designated sections for ride experiences for customer sets like thrill seekers, kids, family fun etc. While in small format a park strives to give the same in single confined space.

Of our experience and interactions with clients, we have also zeroed on certain slides that are must haves as per the size of the park. For e.g. a Waterplay structure and wave pool is a must in any park as it is a fun arena for all ages given the family oriented culture in Asia. For Typhoon Waterpark in Vietnam, Arihant supplied a 0.4 hectare (4046 sq. meters) wave pool as the park was spread across a huge space.

Adding to the difference in parks, Themes for long have been known to create an atmosphere of another place and time. It gives a story to remember and registers at a faster pace with the visitors than a normal ride. This personification and storytelling equally works towards shaping a successful park. Of our past data, current trends and client interactions, we have come to conclude that there is an aura around themes that no park visitor can ignore. The industry is shifting to characterization of attractions, including story telling. You can forget a ride but not the experience and how it made you feel!

Keeping up with the same notion, we have a host of current best-selling products that speak story and theme.

• Plug N Play: A path-breaking concept to have multiple themes on one water play structures. Easily re-theme the water play structure at any time to keep surprising your guests. Bring your guests in back for a new feel in the new season
• Treasure Ship: A multi-level lifelike and larger than life themed play structure! This is the perfect family themed slide play structure which has something for everyone.
• Bay Series: Winner of ‘The Economic Times Polymer Award 2019’, this humongous slide is one of its kind 6 seater and amplifies the ride experience with 8-10 oscillations
• Themed Crusader: Winner of ‘The Economic Times Polymer Award 2020’, this giant takes its inspiration from the various natural elements incorporating it with the slide which takes the ride experience to another level. Themes with butterfly, Cobra, Leopard, Wave Surfer have been clients favorite

Arihant has always worked towards creating the clients vision into reality. For the same we have developed themes as per the clients brief, needs and positioning. To cite an example, a park in India wanted to create a feel of Heaven in their upcoming waterpark which is also named ‘’Heaven waterpark’’.  Based on our data, that the most time spent by visitors in a park is in a Waterplay structure, we overturned the entire play structure into a ‘’Heaven Lookalike’’ What followed was a process to create a visually appealing ‘Slice of Heaven’

Similarly, a park in Srilanka, wanted to bring in the speed and rush of Car Racing in the waterpark. Arihant, based on client’s requirement, designed a unique car racing themed Waterplay structure to address the client’s requirements.

Spending time at a waterpark has become a popular activity for people across the globe. People prefer cooling off in wave pools and sliding down water slides when the weather heats up. But the immense crowds are limited to a certain season whereas rest of the seasons goes relatively easy for water parks

In such scenario rarely do we come across signs of energy efficiency or water conservation by water parks. It is very evident that not all months have the same traction of guests as compared to the peak season. But are the water parks optimizing the resources to save during the slack period? Are they cashing in on the slack season too?

As an example let’s look at how an efficient wave pool can help save almost half of the electricity costs of any water park

In peak season you have to run the wave pool at full power as the public demands it, but what about the slack season? Let’s assume that during the slack period there are around 150 people in the park out of which only 70-100 decide to join in your wave pool during scheduled time.  Do we start wave pool at full power? Definitely NO!

 Let’s see how this works.

Arihant water park equipment uses technology such that it enhances the usability of the equipments and saves big on the client’s electricity consumption with even if the equipments are partially operated.

Let’s assume that the wave pool is of 100 HP with 2 blowers. If the wave pool operates for 1 hour, below is how you can optimize the electricity consumption.

                                  *All figs in INR                                                            

Arihant’s wave pool system allows you to run the wave pool on a single blower efficiently. You can cut the cost to half for the same performance.

Now one may ask why not run the wave pool at half the power always? The answer to this is, that more the no. of people in the pool the more resistance to the wave generation. Hence if we run the wave pool at half power each time, it won’t be able to deliver the exact results and the guests will be left disappointed.