“TWIST, TURN, PLUNGE, SLIDE, SPLASH, WIND, FLOAT & RELAX
Zoom Flume Water Park has more than a dozen ways to pump up the fun.”
A visit to the water park with my 8 year old grandson.
The Zoom Flume Water Park is where strip down to their swim suit essentials, eat fast food and get wet. We arrived mid-afternoon and parked a far distance from the ticket entrance. I sensed that this Sunday afternoon would be crowded. Once we entered into the park and passed the souvenir shop, we made our way to the changing room, then tip toed along on the scorching hot pavement past the fast-food hut to our first water feature, Lazy River. We waited in line for thirty-minutes to ride on tubes and dip our feet into the water along a meandering canal propelled by water jets. We lazily floated along.
I am obsessed that I did not bring sun screen on this blistering hot day. My tender white skin is baking in this 92 degree heat. At the end of this twenty-minute float, the young guide instructs me to exit to my right and leave my tube behind for the next lazy floater. Their summer job is keep crowds moving along. I stumbled up the stairs out of the water and made my way back onto the hot pavement.
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Wandering through the water park I witness line after line of exposed flesh waiting for some exhilarating slide, water chute or wave pool designed to stimulate wet sensations. Invisible to the human eye is a network of pumps and pipes pulsing water underground to each of the water attractions. We have paid our entrance fee and we are all standing inside the park — a place on planet earth engineered for fun @ $42 per person for an all-day pass.
I’m standing in line staring at a large bar code tatoo on a suntanned neck of a 30 something “zoom flumer.” I’m thinking “what a mass of people crowded here— the exposed flesh of supersized bodies with their scrawny, innocent children running ahead or lagging behind. It’s one of those moments when you’re perplexed by so many children following in the footsteps of older adults, without a reflection on why they have children. What’s the real reason for so many off-string, especially when everything costs so much. Are these children an intended replacement and future care giver, an accident of sexual pleasure, either, neither or both?
I’m standing in the Zume Flume, surrounded by this elaborate place of landscaped hills, stairs, bridges, shaded coverings, slides, fountains spraying, water flowing in large plastic tubes and lots of concrete walkways, I realized how far we have come as a culture. We have developed an insatiable appetite for the stimulation of entertainment that is larger than life — created by an economy designed to make money off our pleasure.
Deep within me, I harbor a distant memory of my early childhood as a boy who hiked upstream in a natural creek, remote from houses nad parking lots. Like in a dream, I’m stepping from rock to rock and skipping a flat stone across a still pool of water, dipping into a swimming hole deeper than our toes can touch bottom, well outside the reach of life guards with whistles and life rings. As the waves continually rise and fall around me to the screams of bathers young and old, I’m overwhelmed by the crowds of people, almost all who have paid $42 each for a day of water pleasure, leaving their phones behind in lockers and bags.
Throughout my ““career, I’ve designed many engaging multi-media and hands-on experiences, yet nothing compares to this place that tumbles and pulverizes your body in water, sends people of all sizes crashing against each other in innocent play. There’s a kind of chaos in this place (although intentional in design) that gives so many options for people to dart around and discover on their own the pleasure of being a child again in water on a hot summer day.