I had never been on an uphill water coaster before, and Noah’s Ark’s Black Anaconda, ProSlide’s first experiment with uphill waterslide technology and also still the longest water coaster outside of Santa Clause, Indiana, seemed like a good one to start with. Even traditional limitations of water slides, such as the fact that water can’t go uphill and it’s hard to thematically integrate a fiberglass tube, are slowly being removed. In a water park it’s just you and maybe a piece of foam or inflated rubber, and when you push yourself off the edge of the chute the experience doesn’t just happen, it happens to you. Although coasters can go upside down at faster than highway speeds, I often feel overly protected inside the cars.
I also like the openness and immediacy of the water slide experience. A water slide designer had a much greater degree of freedom to experiment with a diversity of layouts, different sequences of curves, drops, helices, and tunnels, and can do so without the burden of exorbitant fabrication and construction costs that beset roller coaster designers. Water slides require an emphasis on the subtleties of layout that roller coasters, with their multitudes of technological gimmicks and high thrills, can sometimes avoid. Nevertheless, I’ve had interest in water parks and their close relationship to theme parks for quite some time, even if that interest rarely expressed itself in the act of donning a bathing suit and trying them first hand. Can’t I simply dislike something without it being a cosmological event? My mother, who for whatever reason became interested in astrology when she was young, insists it’s because I’m a Leo and Leo’s are associated with fire and fire signs are incompatible with water signs… and I frankly don’t know what to say to that. For various reasons I’ve been adverse to water throughout my life. Perhaps part of my perception was shaped by the fact that visiting a major stand-alone water park was a relatively uncommon experience for me, and so I derived extra pleasure simply from the novelty that it wasn’t just another amusement park. Not that I’m nearly as an astute a critic on water slides as I am on roller coasters. Maybe water parks are just an easier business to manage than dry mechanical theme parks, but despite the absence of any top ten wooden roller coasters I found Noah’s Ark to be the easiest park to enjoy in the Wisconsin Dells. Rather than force an appearance as a big-budget theme park where it doesn’t work, Noah’s Ark feels far more natural, taking time to find a clever and original name for their slides rather than slapping an expensive but purposeless façade over the front. There’s still plenty of greenery surrounding the midways, the slides and infrastructure all appear to be properly maintained, and the employees are mostly all friendly and efficient. Noah’s Ark Water Park is advertised as the largest water park in the United States (although I’m curious how exactly they measure that claim), and it’s also probably the only major amusement property in the Wisconsin Dells area that has its act together in terms of management and customer service. Olympus with its brain dead loop of teenie pop tunes, and we hadn’t even gotten our all-day wristbands yet.
As we neared the main entrance to Noah’s Ark a selection of classic rock playing over the park’s loudspeakers could be heard, already signaling this place was a drastic improvement over Mt.
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