Article by Catalin Kostea
Aquatic parks are ideal for amusement and recreation for each member of the family:daddy can splash around a bit and then sit back and relax while having a cup of tea and browse his magazine; mother can use her sunscreen and take a sunbath, while the little ones decide to go on all rides they can see, and grandmother watches over all of them. In the summer, it would be certainly a nice way to relax, but what can we do in the case it’s too cold to be outside and get a tan? The solution is not hard at all: get to an indoor water park!
Indoor aquatic parks have first appeared in Canada, around 1985, and in a few years their popularity sky-rocketed, first in the United States of America, and Europe was next. The Canadian World Waterpark (as it was called), was located in a large shopping mall in the city of Edmonton, and it caught on quite fast. The reason? There are lots of rainy days per year in this place, and it is a city quite far from any beach: the Pacific Ocean is 1600 kilometers away, and beautiful Hudson Bay is 1400 km away (anyway, you won’t find a beach at Hudson Bay).
So the indoor water park in the city of Edmonton was an excellent flash of inspiration, and locals started coming in large numbers…and they still do now. They go crazy for the curly slides, the big river (they have a “lazy river” which is fun, I must say), the body slides,3+ rides,tube slides, and everything else a good indoor aquatic park is made out of.
And, if you want to see which are the really dandy indoor water parks, know that there are several conditions that help the place meet the standards: a good water park should have at least 2 tube slides, two body slides, one river (regardless if it’s lazy or “angry” torrent), one children play area with all the stuff they would possibly wish (geysers, slides, sand etc), one wave pool and other things.
Today, the European community, you’ll see tens, maybe hundreds of wonderful indoor aquatic parks. In Germany, as a matter of fact, in Stralsund, there is one of the most magnificent water parks of them all: the Hansedom Water Park. It is not just indoor, it also has open gardens and parks, making it quite appealing to tourists around the continent. Besides the requirements I showed you in the last paragraph, the Stralsund Water Park has a lot more things to show, like massage lounges, saunas, sport clubs, and much more. In their language such a place is called “freizeit park”, which means “leisure park”.
Other fascinating water parks are located in France, the UK and Portugal, but we’ll leave that story for another time. Nothing is better than enjoying yourself for two or three days at a “freizeit park”, don’t think I’m lying. It’s a pity we aren’t able to go there every Saturday and Sunday, but hey – we’ve got to work and earn a living, right? But should you ever make the decision to go to such a park with your family, let me remind you to keep an eye on the little ones, because sometimes these slides and rivers can be a little dangerous.
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In Stralsund you will find the greatest and most complex “freizeitpark Deutschland” you will ever see.
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