Water wars are taking shape in greater Northeast Tarrant County.The city-owned NRH {-2}O in North Richland Hills is adding a $1.7 million ride, and construction is ongoing at the soon-to-open $10 million Hawaiian Falls in Roanoke.And not too far away, in Grapevine, construction continues on a water park that is expected to open this summer for resort guests at the Gaylord Texan.The battle for water park patrons is on.Roanoke City Manager Jimmy Stathatos said that despite the number of local water parks, Roanoke should have no problem drawing big crowds, considering its location on the Denton-Tarrant county border. The city has already established itself as a dining destination.”Hawaiian Falls will have one of the largest water features in North America in terms of the amount of people it will hold — more than 2,000 at one time,” he said. “I think everyone’s lucky there are so many choices.”The main reason water parks are popular is simple.”Mainly because it’s hot,” said Aleatha Ezra, spokeswoman for the World Waterpark Association.That’s especially true in North Texas, where we eclipsed 100 degrees 21 times last summer.Ezra said attendance at North America’s roughly 1,000 water parks is in the neighborhood of 80 million.

The Viper NRH {-2}O puts an average of $4 million a year into North Richland Hills’ coffers, city spokeswoman Stephanie Hee said. The city adds an attraction every other year or so to help ensure that the park keeps bringing in about 250,000 guests each summer.This year, it’s a doozy. The Viper is a family-oriented thrill ride, Hee said.”It takes four riders instead of two, and you’re all facing one another so you can see the excitement on their faces while you’re riding,” she said.Hee said the Viper is a 430-foot slide that’s 43.2 feet high and ends with a 20-foot-wide “mega tube” where the rafts slosh back and forth before they slip out across a pool. It should be finished before the park opens next month, Hee said.The Viper will be the first one in North America, said Lesley Baker, senior marketing manager with WhiteWater West Industries. Other Vipers are being built in China and Dubai.The slide will be the first major addition to the park since 2009, when Beachside Bay opened with a white-sand beach, sand volleyball court and pool. The balance of $2.1 million borrowed last year for NRH {-2}O improvements is destined for a two-story food services building with a covered pavilion and an observation deck overlooking the wave pool and volleyball games.”So far we’re doing good,” Hee said. “Hopefully we won’t have inclement weather to delay construction.”

In Roanoke, Hawaiian Falls, which already has water parks in Mansfield, Garland and The Colony, will operate the Roanoke-owned park under a 40-year lease.Officials expect the park to generate $200,000 in sales tax revenue in its first year, said Debra Wallace, assistant city manager and chief financial officer.Hawaiian Falls spokesman David Alvey said the park will include “the biggest and the best, the world’s largest water playground.”Mega WaterWorld will be six stories tall and have a dozen slides coming off it, Alvey said.”We designed it for families to be able to play together on it,” he said.The lowest level is designed for toddlers, Alvey said.”This ground-floor level also has water wheels and interactive features,” he said. “The first level has small slides for preschoolers to slide down with their siblings or parents. As you venture higher up into the play structure, the slides and features are meant to appeal to older kids and their parents.”The park will also have a 16,000-square-foot wave pool and lazy river, Alvey said. But he expects people to line up for two “dumping buckets” that send 500 to 1,000 gallons at a time cascading onto them.

Private Parks, While NRH {-2}O is expanding and Hawaiian Falls is coming, other privately owned parks will certainly draw their share of water lovers.Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine was built as an indoor water park resort and features nine huge slides, six pools, a water fort and a lazy river that are ensconced in the 80,000-square-foot Bear Track Landing. Resort guests are protected from the weather year-round in an environment that’s kept at 84 degrees, and the water is heated as well. Summer guests may also enjoy the 84,000-square-foot Raccoon Lagoon outdoor water park.Just down the street is the Gaylord Texan, which plans to opens its water park for clients this summer, spokeswoman Stacey Rendelman said. Attractions include a 10-acre pool with a 600-foot lazy river and a water tower that spills from 200 feet in the air. Resort guests also enjoy a 6,000-square-foot lagoon, a 27-foot-tall winding water slide, a two-person zip line, three horseshoe hot pools and sun decks with seating for 1,200.Arlington’s Hurricane Harbor is still the granddaddy of water parks and has dozens of slides and other features that attract so many people on hot days that — from cars zipping by on Interstate 20 — the towers and pools look like stirred-up fire ant mounds.But its challengers are gaining on it.This report includes material from the Star-Telegram archives.Terry Evans, 817-390-7620

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The founders of the Blake, Kymberly and George Rapier Charitable Trust donated $2 million on Friday to Morgan’s Wonderland, the largest gift from an individual or family made to the theme park to date.
George and Kym Rapier had planned to contribute a check for $1 million to Morgan’s Wonderland, a park designed for families with special-needs children and adults. However, Kym Rapier pulled out a pen and crossed out the $1 million and wrote in the new amount for $2 million, much to the surprise of Morgan’s Wonderland founder Gordon Hartman.

To commemorate the donation, Hartman renamed the park’s 575-seat amphitheater the Rapier Starlight Amphitheater.
“We owe Dr. and Mrs. Rapier our deepest gratitude for their incredibly generous gift to Morgan’s Wonderland,” Hartman says. “This will enable us to expand programs and services for those with special needs in a safe, inclusive, uplifting environment. We look forward to many, many performances and special events at the Rapier Starlight Amphitheater.”
The Rapiers established the Blake, Kymberly and George Rapier Charitable Trust in 2006. Since then, the trust has donated a $1 million or more annually to causes promoting education, stay-in-school initiatives, homeless pets, needy animals and seniors. In 2011 alone, the trust donated more than $17 million to San Antonio causes.

George Rapier is the founder WellMed Medical Management Inc., a San Antonio-based company that provides health care to seniors. WellMed was bought out by UnitedHealthcare.

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Merlin Entertainments (Thailand), a leading UKbased operator of amusement parks and other attractions, is looking for investment opportunities in Bangkok



The company, which opened Madame Tussauds Bangkok in December, expects to operate three attractions in Bangkok within two years, which will be packaged together into a “cluster” to generate economies of scale.

The company will spend between Bt400 million and Bt500 million to develop one new attraction. It also plans to take over at least one other facility.

Paul Williams, the company director and general manager of Madame Tussauds Bangkok, said the company is looking for empty space in Bangkok to develop a “Lego Land Discovery Centre”.

He said that in London, the company runs clusters of entertainment attractions, including the London Eye, London Aquarium, and London Dungeon.

“In Bangkok, there is also the possibility of putting two or three attractions together so they can be sold in one package to customers,” said Williams.

He added that with the cluster system, the company would be able to manage several attractions at a low cost, as it will require just one marketing manager and one operations manager to handle all the facilities.

Merlin Entertainments last Thursday officially opened Madame Tussauds waxwork museum in Bangkok. Located in Siam Discovery Centre, the 3,000squaremetre museum is expected to attract about 500,000 visitors in the first year, of which at least 80 per cent will be Thais.

Williams said that following the soft opening on December 4, Madame Tussauds had received very positive feedback from its customers.

Madame Tussauds Bangkok features 80 waxworks of popular movie stars and celebrities, including Theeradej “Ken” Wongpuapan, Ann Thongprasom, Khemanit “Pancake” Jamikorn, Tata Young, Yuenyong “Aed Carabao” Opakul, Johnny Depp, Nicole Kidman and US President Barack Obama.

The museum will launch waxworks of Spiderman in March, Sukrit “Bie” Wisetkaew in April and popular Japanese cartoon character Doraemon in May.

In October, the museum will launch a 300squaremetre “Horror Maze”. It will also open a 200seat fourdimensional cinema in the next two years with an investment of Bt50 million.

Williams said Bangkok was a promising market with plenty of welleducated young people who enjoy a monthly income of between Bt20,000 and Bt25,000. They can’t afford to visit the Madame Tussauds museums in London and New York.

He said about 80 per cent of the Bangkok attraction’s customers are young people aged between 16 and 35.

Merlin Entertainments Group operates 62 attractions and six hotels in 13 countries around the world.

The company has Madame Tussauds wax museums in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, New York, Washington DC, Las Vegas, Hollywood, Hong Kong and Shanghai. The company will open a new Madame Tussauds in Vienna next month.

The Bangkok attraction is the first Madame Tussauds in Southeast Asia.

Mum’s the word on a new ride slated to join Dorney Park‘s lineup of belly-dropping, giggle-inducing thrillers, and park representatives say enthusiasts will have to wait until summer 2012 to try it out. Dorney Park’s parent corporation, Cedar Fair L.P., submitted a plan to South Whitehall Township for a new 138-foot-high amusement ride. But the plan doesn’t mention what kind of a ride it is, and the park’s general manager, Jason McClure, said his lips are sealed.

“We are keeping our focus on 2011 and all the new things we have in store with Planet Snoopy,” McClure said.

The park’s opening day will reveal the results of an $8 million top-to-bottom makeover of 10-year-old Camp Snoopy, the 3.5-acre children’s area named after the too-cool beagle from Charles Schulz‘s “Peanuts” comic strip. The renovation will bring six new rides, an amphitheater, a souvenir store and a “soda pop shop” featuring root beer floats. Dorney representatives will take questions about the proposed 2012 addition from the South Whitehall Planning Commission on Feb. 17, but even that won’t demystify the new ride. ”The Planning Commission can ask us a variety of questions… but it’s premature to get into a lot of detail,” McClure said.

That hasn’t stopped people from speculating that the incoming ride will be a coaster from California‘s Great America called Invertigo. The coaster happens to be 138 feet tall and is being relocated to another park within Cedar Fair’s amusement park empire, according to a Great America news release issued last week. Invertigo takes riders sitting face to face up a 138-foot-tall tower, then on several loops and twists both forward and backward through three inversions. The rumor of the swap surfaced last week on a theme-park fan site called Screamscape.com, but Dorney spokesman Chuck Hutchison said the rumors are just that — rumors. Invertigo reopened in July almost a year after a mechanical failure left two dozen people trapped 80 feet in the air for at least three hours, according to CNN. All of the trapped riders were rescued and no one was injured.

Under Dorney’s proposal for a new ride, several kiddie rides would be removed, as well as a basketball game, concrete midways and a portion of a paved service drive, affecting about 1.7 acres of the 187-acre property zoned as commercial recreation. Three Dorney rides are listed for sale on Ital International LLC, which dubs itself as the amusement industry’s most comprehensive new and used ride brokerage source. The Antique Cars and Dune Buggy rides are both listed for $18,000, and the Kiddie Merry-Go-Round is listed for $25,000.

The ride is slated for the western portion of the park, just north of Lincoln Avenue and Dorney Park Road and south of the mammoth Steel Force coaster, where the old Laser coaster used to be.

The Laser was removed in 2008 after 22 years of double-loop thrills. The portable coaster, anchored by tanks of water, was originally named Colossus.

The site of the new ride, where Laser stood, is on the edge of a 100-year flood plain. The location caused heated debate at the township level when Dorney sought approval for Laser. It was eventually approved with a host of conditions attached.

If Invertigo greets fans in 2012, it would be the park’s third inverted coaster, making Dorney Park the only amusement park in the country to have three true inverted coasters, according to a post on Screamscape.com.

McClure said the park will release more information on the ride this summer.