Tidal Wave Bay was one of the main attractions of Wildwater Kingdom in Ohio. I struggled a bit with which picture to use for this post for several reasons. For one, most of you who go to these places have seen a wave pool before. They all look similar. Even Geauga Lake had a wave pool of its own, but that closed years ago. I wondered if the wave generator from Geauga Lake was brought over here and reused. Another reason is that a wave pool is easy to photograph. It’s got that azure color and is full of people, so I have several photos.
The picture above isn’t my favorite, but it does capture the one thing that bothered me about Tidal Wave Bay. You probably know that the story of Wildwater Kingdom is one of missed expections. Cedar Fair purchased Geauga Lake and the old SeaWorld park and immediately converted the SeaWorld side into a waterpark. The attendance for the combined parks dropped off significantly and just a few years later, the Geauga Lake side closed. In the meantime, it took two years to fully complete the waterpark as you see it on this website. This means that the second phase of Wildwater Kingdom’s construction was completed after Cedar Fair knew the attendance would never be what it needed.
There’s a lot of unused space on this side of Wildwater Kingdom. When in the middle of the wave pool, you look at the hillside behind it. Essentially you are standing in the bowl of the old Sea Lion and Otter Stadium. It feels incomplete. There was much more that could have been done here, but by the time Cedar Fair built this side of the park, it was too late. You can even still see the path lights on the hill that ran behind the old stadium.
This had to have an effect on park guests over the years.
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