Dedicated Soak City Entrance & Park Restructuring
- Thread starter cschnizer
- Start date
I disagree- They need to move all of soak city south of Racer, adding something new there would be silly. even if they sell off the farmland on the side of the park like they're planning, they still own o TON of land south of soak city they can expand to.
I do agree, ideally everything would be south, I just don’t see them tearing up everything they have north side.
They haven’t meaningfully done anything to the north side of Soak City since 2015, when the small Splash Island play area was added, and that could easily be moved to the south side if the park wanted to.
Other than Splash Island, literally the only investments in the past decade that I can think of on the north side were that Baja Bends was repainted in 2015 and Freestylin’ was repainted sometime around 2018.
Other than that, they’ve exclusively removed things from the north side over the past 10+ years. The restaurant near the entrance plaza was gutted in 2021. The snack market across from Splash Island, also added in 2015, was removed a few years ago. Tornado was removed in 2018. The Shoot the Curl slides were removed in 2014. None of these were replaced.
There’s a clear pattern to me that the park has not been investing in any infrastructure on the north side of Soak City. I don’t know if they have any active plans to get rid of it, but it seems obvious that they’ve left the door open to removing it.
Splash Island can be moved to the south side, and we now know from the survey options that a spiritual successor to the lazy river is being considered. That leaves Baja Bends and Freestylin’ as the only remaining attractions to consider for the north side, and both are aging and generic family waterslides whose roles in the attraction lineup could easily be replaced with a new slide complex on the south side. Other than that, they’d just need to install a new bathhouse in the back of the water park and put in a new entrance between Twisted Timbers and Apple Zapple.
I think it’s a legitimate possibility that the park has at least considered removing the north side. Their actions (or inaction) there in recent years suggests it’s on the table.
What I’d love to know is what it would take to actually bring back the lake there. Is it just a matter of digging a hole and filling it with water, or is it a massive infrastructural undertaking?
Other than Splash Island, literally the only investments in the past decade that I can think of on the north side were that Baja Bends was repainted in 2015 and Freestylin’ was repainted sometime around 2018.
Other than that, they’ve exclusively removed things from the north side over the past 10+ years. The restaurant near the entrance plaza was gutted in 2021. The snack market across from Splash Island, also added in 2015, was removed a few years ago. Tornado was removed in 2018. The Shoot the Curl slides were removed in 2014. None of these were replaced.
There’s a clear pattern to me that the park has not been investing in any infrastructure on the north side of Soak City. I don’t know if they have any active plans to get rid of it, but it seems obvious that they’ve left the door open to removing it.
Splash Island can be moved to the south side, and we now know from the survey options that a spiritual successor to the lazy river is being considered. That leaves Baja Bends and Freestylin’ as the only remaining attractions to consider for the north side, and both are aging and generic family waterslides whose roles in the attraction lineup could easily be replaced with a new slide complex on the south side. Other than that, they’d just need to install a new bathhouse in the back of the water park and put in a new entrance between Twisted Timbers and Apple Zapple.
I think it’s a legitimate possibility that the park has at least considered removing the north side. Their actions (or inaction) there in recent years suggests it’s on the table.
What I’d love to know is what it would take to actually bring back the lake there. Is it just a matter of digging a hole and filling it with water, or is it a massive infrastructural undertaking?
I'm pretty sure the bathhouse you're referring to already exists, though perhaps could use an upgrade in this setup?
Otherwise, I'm in full agreement to connect Soak City via the TT/AZ dead-end.
South side doesn’t have a full bath house; it just has a locker complex and a handful of outdoor changing rooms, but nothing of the same scale as what’s on the north side.
I wonder if they are doing the “slow death” thing of they don’t know what they would use the land for so just run shit til it dies then figure it out.
This is the right approach in my opinion.
The park doesn't need to take proactive action for a long, long time—they just need to send any investment they can to the south side of Racer and let natural attrition do its work on the north side. Eventually it will be time for a major water park overhaul again (like the conversion to Soak City a while back) and, when it is, if KD has played their cards right for the years leading up to that point, they'll be able to justify shifting the entire water park past Racer and hopefully, maybe even getting a new dedicated entrance and parking lot for the water park. The ROI on a project like that is far easier to justify if there's next to nothing of worth left on the north side anyway.
looking at kings dominion's water park, I think they must rather move the water park stuff into all of lion country safari space and convert the current theme park side water park back into a lake (with a new version of the apple turnover ride & maybe another flat ride on the other half of the theme park side water park )
The north side of the waterpark is not a very nice space. It’s built in a hole. The south side of the waterpark is very nice with trees scattered in between attractions.
The removal of Anaconda much improved the aesthetic of the park. Removing the north side of the waterpark and relocating at least the lazy river would be an improvement to the park. Just bring the lake back it would be beautiful.
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Bring back the large lake with a paddle boat, then they can advertise to all the people crying about the Magic Kingdom changes.
Prior to 2019, we visited it roughly 10 times a year with most of those times being during the summer. We would probably spend 3-4 hours at the water park each time. The northside was always a quick stop before making our way to the back where there was actual shade. Even with the 2 splash areas on the north side, we felt the set in the back was better. The lazy river is annoying because you can only make one lap even if there was no one waiting to take your raft. Even with my kids being older this past summer, we did not ride anything on the north side.
I'm all for the demise of this entrance, everything feels old, the snack/restaurant wasn't opened the last 2 times I was there. Long walk to the good stuff
Prior to 2019, we visited it roughly 10 times a year with most of those times being during the summer. We would probably spend 3-4 hours at the water park each time. The northside was always a quick stop before making our way to the back where there was actual shade. Even with the 2 splash areas on the north side, we felt the set in the back was better. The lazy river is annoying because you can only make one lap even if there was no one waiting to take your raft. Even with my kids being older this past summer, we did not ride anything on the north side.
I'm all for the demise of this entrance, everything feels old, the snack/restaurant wasn't opened the last 2 times I was there. Long walk to the good stuff
I agree with some of the comments above. I always thought that an entrance to Soak City between Apple Zapple and Twisted Timbers makes sense, along with a parking lot in the back of the property with a secondary entrance. The Lazy River could be relocated (or even have a new one built) on the south side. Baja Bend and FreeStylin' are pretty outdated and I feel like a Mat Racer like slide would be a great addition to Soak City.
If the lake were to ever come back, I'd love to see the big fountain it had in the middle make a comeback.
If the lake were to ever come back, I'd love to see the big fountain it had in the middle make a comeback.
Can we please get the main parking lot repaved before any talk about second, Soak-City-Dedicated, parking lots please?
They own the land to make upgrades and improvements to Theme Park Way in such a way to build guest parking back there and reroute maintenance access a bit.
I think it'd probably be costly if the goal was only a parking lot, but if they separated Soak City into it's own second gate park with gold tier passholders retaining access, they could be selling water park only admissions and have a way to collect on it.
Another option is to consolidate the new entrance as a gate from inside the dry park and as a tram stop location for water park only guests with the western end of the main parking lot dedicated for Soak City parking. In this configuration, they'd also keep the entrance under R75 as an additional point of egress and possibly as an alternate gate location for busy days.
Yeah, basically a bus or whatever that circles between the proposed entrance and the main parking lot in case they don't want to go through the effort and expense of upgrading Theme Park Way for guest traffic.
Is there a single Six Flags / Cedar Fair park that currently still offers any type of tram / transport service? Most of the ones that existed before have already been phased out like at SFGAdv and SFMM. Unlikely they'd wanna invest in the expense of it.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, I do believe SFGAdv still has the shuttle between the main park and Hurricane Harbor, but the parks are much farther apart and not connected in any way,
EDIT: Now that I think about it, I do believe SFGAdv still has the shuttle between the main park and Hurricane Harbor, but the parks are much farther apart and not connected in any way,
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I believe SFOG still has a trolley of sorts but they only ever run one at a time.