An ongoing series of events have taken place in recent weeks with an Australian water park due to receive the much-hyped AquaLoop slide from White Water West, a US water attraction manufacturer. The AquaLoop is a new water slide that features a loop at its main feature as its name would suggest.

Initially WhiteWater World was reported was in talks with the manufacturer to bring the ride to Australia. Shortly after, it was suggested that another company had come in and agreed to purchase more AquaLoop attractions in exchange for an exclusivity agreement.

Parkz now learns that the new buyer is Warner Village Theme Parks, owners of Wet'n'Wild Water World on the Gold Coast.

The new attraction will in fact be four of the slides, to give it much needed capacity at Wet'n'Wild Water World, a park that in recent years has seen tremendous growth and has to cater for very large crowds.

Individually the AquaLoop only caters for up to 120 people per hour; Wet'n'Wild's collection will cater for 480 people per hour.

The slide boasts a 17m height, with individual riders reaching speeds of 60km/hr as they enter the angled loop. They then proceed to swiftly slide up and through the 360º loop.

Varying reports have been given on the expected opening date. One can be sure however that they'll be open for business at some stage in 2010.

Comments

Posted by AlexB at 5:52pm, 18 Dec 09

Good to have confirmation, but i think many of us worked that out from TipsyBella's comments a while ago. I'm glad to see they're going with 4. 1 would have been a waste IMO, with queues wayyyyy too long to be worth it. 4 is a good number and will keep the people pumping through nicely.
Hopefully, they will all feed out of the same queue, unlike the whitewater mountain (i think that's the name) where there are four different slides with four different lines at the top of the hill.

Any speculation on where it will go?

Hoping they do something with the terror canyon space, but it's probably likely IMO to go over near Kamikaze.

Posted by tolly1804 at 6:25pm, 18 Dec 09

I would image that they will go near the front of the park to liven that area up, and one would definitely hope that they all feed from the one queue. Just quickly, i was out there the other day and the new ramp out the front looks really good, but it doesn't look like it will be ready for christmas?

Posted by MickeyD at 4:35pm, 19 Dec 09

Awesome! Awesome! Awesome! I'm so glad they are building 4 of these Beasts, the sight and idea of this surely will guarantee success before the ground is even broken. I mean the mere idea of a vertically looping water slide is just crazy!!! I had completely forgotten about these and last I heard was that the design was still in the testing stage. Granted that was a while ago, just glad to hear it's all come full circle!

I'm hopeing (after such a slack 2009) this is going to set the stage for an aggressively competitive 2010 for all Gold Coast Theme Parks bringing a variety of exciting new attractions

Posted by GoGoBoy at 5:06pm, 19 Dec 09

Thank for this news Richard.

Is it just me or is Wet 'n' Wild turning into the Six Flags of the waterpark world? They seems to be adding new attractions every year - just like Six Flags did for a while - with less emphasis on the quality of the park in general. A few years ago when they only added a new attraction every 2 or 3 years there was more of a focus on the quality and presentation of each new ride and how it fit in with the rest of the park. Now it seems like they just add something every year, no matter what it is, with very little thought to theming and presentation. Whitewater Mountain and Calypso Beach were such well thought-out additions. Then H20 Zone came along and it became a bit of a mess. I personally thing Kamikaze is the ugliest. Anyway it remains to be seen how well these new slides will be integrated... I just think there's got to be a better balance between adding a new attraction every year and ensuring each addition is of the highest quality.

Regardless, I'm sure this will go down well and will no doubt apply yet more pressure to WhiteWater World. It's time for them to make their move

Posted by tipsy_bella at 6:51pm, 19 Dec 09

Mickey D - the slide is not a vertical loop - it is slanted.

Posted by Gazza at 8:53pm, 19 Dec 09

QUOTE (GoGoBoy @ Dec 19 2009, 04:06 PM)

Whitewater Mountain and Calypso Beach were such well thought-out additions. Then H20 Zone came along and it became a bit of a mess.

Arguably though, Super 8, Speedcoaster, Mammoth Falls, Whirlpool aren't exactly themed either, and these were all around well before the H20 Zone was built.

Posted by tolly1804 at 10:20pm, 19 Dec 09

I wonder if we will see any more of White Water Wests catalog at Wet n Wild, or will purchasing 4 of the looping coasters meet VRTP's promise to purchase more slides then White Water World would have?

Posted by Gazza at 11:14pm, 19 Dec 09

Somehow I think VRTP might have a preference for Whitewater West anyhow...Barring the Tornado, everything at their Phoenix park was by Whitewater West.

Posted by Kylalady at 11:34pm, 7 Jan 10

QUOTE (Parkz News @ Dec 14 2009, 05:46 PM)

Wet'n'Wild goes upside down to find new attraction

Click here to continue reading...

looks like it gonna be one interesting slide when done... cant wait...

Posted by Ess-93 at 1:49pm, 28 Jan 10

Has 'at some stage in 2010' been given an exact date?

Posted by AlexB at 8:11am, 29 Jan 10

Edit - it's already posted in the other aqualoop thread

Mods - how about combining the two?