montezooma

Quick update: We now have water in two pools, the Caban-a-rama pool and the Cowabunga Kids Cove pool. We have begun assembling the children’s play structure from Fibrart. We have also begun to install Beach Blanket Banzaii, the 4-person raft slide from Polin. Today the wave pool gets a plaster coat and we will begin filling it with water tonight. Opening is just a couple of weeks away…July 4th! Caban-A-Rama pool Custom made bike racks. The beginnings of Beach Blanket Banzaii Shade structures will be located throughout the park. This is the eating area right off Bullwinkle’s Boardwalk Grille Family raft slide. Cowabunga Kids Cove Cowabunga kids Cove. There will 10 slides in the kids area including a 4 lane mini racer. Fibrart play structure nighttime shot

Thanks Robb and Elisa. Anywho…this park is really coming together and I am so proud of the final product. Take a look at the ZumaZOOMa slide that is now being erected

Today we announced the park will open in a month on July 4th…and with that announcement I am pleased to present this first exclusive look at “Surfin’ USA” the first face-first downhill UPHILL racer in America.

The greatest thing about that video, besides showing how awesome the park is, is seeing me doing a dance and waving my arms on the patio at 3:55. How cool is the "Surfin' USA" mat racer???

Cool fly over of the park by someone who posted it to youtube.

Here’s an update from the past week. Yes, summer is closing in on us quickly but construction carries on at a rigorous pace. We had some major winds the entire week which shut down slide installation. Work on all buildings in nearing completion and we are beginning to focus on walkways and landscaping around the park. As I see more and more details finished up I am really proud of the product we will be bringing to the Vegas market. Here is the front entrance to the park. Bright, colorful and really sets the stage for the rest of the park. Here you can see the stylistic look of Boardwalk Beach, Dole pineapple whip is served from this building. Here’s me inside Point Panic. The Polin light effects are sooooo coooool Rocky’s beach side cafe and our VIP cabana pool. Surf-A-Rama Dive In wave pool. Cowabunga Kids Cove will feature this cute water play structure that will have 10 different slides for the kiddies…all in heated water of course. Surf-A-GoGo Arcade games in the Sharkcade.

Thanks everyone for all the great comments. Yes, everything will be painted. The rock will look like rock and the wood will look like wood. Here’s more:

It is in Henderson. Just 10 minutes or so from the strip. Of course it will take you an hour to get off the strip, but then just a quick 10 minutes to the park.

Photo update 5/1/14

I doubt it!

Here’s a few shots of what Polin calls the “Space Shuttle…we call it “Surf-A-Go-Go”

Ha Ha, so funny that you would notice this. It bugs me every time I look at the wave pool. This was a simple mistake made on the plans. it was supposed to be corrected but somehow got built the wrong way. Please don’t bring it up again and let’s pretend it’s there to make the waves bigger and better.

We got these great overhead shots of the park. You can really see things starting to come together. We started hiring our opening crew this week and have had some great applicants. I am getting really excited for opening day!

SIX FLAGS FIESTA TEXAS 10 YEAR PLAN (10 years ago) I guess it was more like 15 years ago, but at that time I was working with Six Flags. I was in charge of putting together a 10 year plan for the park which included an large new looping steel coaster, a watepark expansion, new children’s area, an Intamin Drop Tower and a giant racing, dueling wooden coaster. Not much ever came of the plan other than these cool renderings.

Doing some carving on Lazy River walls.

I do not understand the motivation behind someone like “Kenny Clark” Therefore I give them no attention. The internet is full of trolls that hide behind false identities and say whatever they want, whether true or not. We take the position on our Facebook page that it is a fan site, and it is there to promote our business. Therefore those that post on the page hatred or negative comments have their comments deleted. If they persist, they are banned. They are free to post their views on their own site, but not ours. Now on a more positive note… Work on the locker & restroom building continues “Boardwalk Beach” our lagoon entrance into the lazy river will be poured this morning. We have secured Dole Whip at our new park. nerd shot of the structural steel for “Wild Surf” Polin’s exclusive Cowabunga Bay family raft slide

The simple reason is after 7:00 the expense of operating the park outweighs the in-park dollars spent. In a theme park guests have money readily available (their wallet is in their back pocket). They want to keep you in the park as long as possible because between riding rides you are buying food, playing games, retail shopping, etc. At a water park you typically don’t have your wallet on you. Purchases are not impulse. It requires you to dry off, go to your locker, then return to your locker…you see what I mean? Admission sales typically drop to practically nothing after 3:00 so every hour later you stay open equates to a high operating cost. There is a sweet spot of giving the guests the time in the park equated to the ticket price vs. extra hours (open later) and that sweet spot typically falls somewhere between 6:00 - 8:00. I love little details, this is for the arcade named Sharky’s “Breaker 1-9” slide is coming together. Why the name? Breaker refers to waves and 1-9 refers to a movie I used to love as a kid, Convoy. I thought it a fun play on words.

Launched our new website today and began slide assembly. http://www.cowabungabay.com/LasVegas/

Yikes! Did anyone notice how phallic that trap door capsule looks lying on its side???

I just came across this and thought it a funny find. Back in the Time Warner days. AstroWorld was still a part of the Six Flags family.

Hello Everyone- It has been awhile since I have given an official update on things going on at the park, but I see that those posts above are doing a great job. Yes, it is true, after taking some time off to re-work some of the “inner-workings” of this project, we are now back in full construction and set for a May 24th opening. There were a lot of rumors floating around about the park never opening, park being sold, the park sinking…The simple truth is we simply ran out of time last year. I did not want to open the park “half-ass”, and now that I look back on what happened at the other water park across town, I am glad we had this time to watch their situation and make sure that those problems will be resolved when we open. There were also reports of us hitting some rough ground (they call it caliche in Las Vegas) this was also true and it forced us to rework one of the slides we already had on site. Our mat racer slide which we call “Surfin’ USA” was originally designed to drop below ground level and then race uphill to this finish line. The hard rock prevented us from this happening. We had to send it back to the drawing boards at Polin. The simple solution was to simply end the slide like every other mat racer…yawn. The slide has now be reprofiled to end with a speed bump. There is a lot of construction taking place on the two main entrance buildings. It is great to see these buildings take their shape. They will be similar in design to our buildings in Draper, UT. Very colorful with some great roof lines. The front gate area will really give you a great sense of arrival and set the theme for the rest of the park. Work continues on all the underground piping, parking lot and grading. We are receiving the final shipments of fiberglass slides this week and crews from Polin have arrived from Turkey to supervise with the assembly of the slides. All the steel columns are being fabricated and should arrive on site by March. That is when you will see vertical construction begin on slides. Here are some photos: Work begins to resume of the main entrance buildings. This was the how we left the building last Summer… You can compare the old profile of the mat racer to the new profile. I think it was a good compromise. More work taking place on pump houses. This one is for the Lazy River. The roof structures were built on the ground and then hoisted into place with a large crane. This is the admission part of the building. Entrance gate framing begins on the locker and merchandise building.

I used to own and operate the Thunder Raceway go-karts at California’s Great America, Kings Dominion and Carowinds when they were Paramount Parks. We operated and maintained the ride and did a revenue split with the parks. They were actually quite profitable, but a huge headache to operate. When Cedar Fair purchased the parks they bought me out of the lease and now operate them themselves.

Kings Island had another huge failure before Son of Beast. Anyone remember the Bat?

I’ve spent the past couple of days in Las Vegas and had some time to kill so I thought I would go take a look at Speed: The Ride. As you can see from the photos is is stored very neatly. There seems to be no site of the trains. I also went to the site of the new GIANT ferris wheel over at the Quad. This thing is huge, and the Quad is looking pretty damn good too. Enjoy the pics!

Here is an article that is more accurate to the situation that is going on. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/56803954-78/park-welch-huish-com.html.csp