The National Post has an excellent article about the “latest sign of the designer indoor water park trend that’s sweeping the hospitality industry.”
These swimming pools-on-steroids are becoming standard amenities at hotels and motels in the United States and Canada.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Niagara Falls, Ont., where this month a multi-million-litre water fight is set to break out between the Great Wolf Lodge and The Fallsview water parks.
Both have many of the same attractions: various waterslides and water bowls, wave pools, areas for small children and a 4,000-litre water bucket that fills up and cascades down a water structure.
The aptly named 125,000-square-foot Fallsview is built on top of a casino parking lot, but close enough to the seventh wonder of the world that those heading down the slides can catch a glimpse of Niagara Falls.
At the 103,000-square-foot Great Wolf Lodge, the water park is housed inside an ersatz log hotel built in a run-down warehouse neighbourhood just beyond the Evil Knievel Museum. But it makes up in decor and theme what it lacks in the location department.
It’s an interesting article with some good comments from the Fallsview Waterpark Marketing Manager, Gary MacGregor.