Noah's Ark 2010: The Scorpion's Tail

Noah's Ark water park, located in the Wisconsin Dells, has announced that their new attraction for 2010 will be the Scorpion's Tail water slide.

The 10 story slide will take riders through a 45 degree loop at up to 40 miles per hour after dropping through a trap door to start things off. The slide is one of WhiteWater West's new AquaLoop attractions, several more of which will open around the world next year.

The park has placed several photos of the ride under construction on their Facebook page:

To see their full gallery, click here.

The Wisconsin Dells Go Dry

The Journal Sentinel has a very interesting article today about the new trend of the big indoor and outdoor water parks located in the popular Wisconsin Dells resort area moving toward offering dry rides and attractions to keep guests visiting longer.

The area has become so saturated - pun intended - with water parks and water attractions that they are now diversifying through dry rides.

Mount Olympus started the trend back in 2006 when they opened an indoor theme park, and now many others are following suit.

This past December the Kalahari Indoor Theme Park opened and now offers guests a selection of rides and activities to take part in - all indoors.

The article also points out that Noah's Arc - a huge and popular water park in the Dells is also renovating their indoor attraction called Noah's Incredible Adventure into Curse of the Crypt to appeal to guests seeking dry attractions.

Noah's Ark 4-D Dive In Theater

I had no idea this opened this past summer until In Park Magazine had an article about it in their current issue. (Very good magazine, btw)

Noah's Ark - a massive water park in the Wisconsin Dells, opened a new 4-D theater at their water park this summer.

Being a water park, the theater was aptly named Noah's 4-D Dive In Theater, and is currently showing the Spongebob Squarepants movie that can be seen at many amusement and theme parks.

There's a catch though. Noah's Arc was not happy to just add a building and show the show with it's traditional 4-D effects, no, they decided to take it up a notch.

This desire led to them adding 9 different special effects in the theater to entertain guests. The $2 million investment needed to represent it's location in a water park, so some changes were made to the normal effects.
Many 4-D theaters use water effects to entertain guests, Noah's Arc took the opportunity to try to soak their guests. In addition to the seat sprays, and over head mist effects, both of which were increased in use, Noah's decided to actually add two gigantic water bombs in the front of the theater.

Other effects, such as wind, bubbles, and lightning are also used to create the 4-D theater.

Noah's Ark has really been on the cutting edge of showing that 'non-traditional' rides can work in a water park. For instance, they have a Chute-the-Chutes, and a themed attraction - Noah's Incredible Adventure - A Vekoma Mad House.

The 4-D theater sounds like another hit for the property. It pumps though 700 guests an hour while showing the 12 minute film.

For more information you can check out Noah's Arc's page for the ride.