Park Water Features

[Mushroom]

I’m a huge fan of water features, and something I’ve always admired about BGW is the variety of water features they use to enhance both the artistry of their themed areas and the park’s natural beauty.

Yesterday was my first visit to BGW this season, so I wanted to use this thread to catalog a disappointing trend I noticed: several of the park’s water features have recently been removed or decommissioned:

• The fountain in the center of Da Vinci’s Garden has been filled with mulch and turned into a flower bed
• The two fountains on either side of the stage in Il Teatro di San Marco have been filled with plants, and the waterfalls behind them have been turned off
• The fountain in Rhinefeld near Burgermeister’s Hideaway has been filled in with bricks, and potted plants have been placed on top (I think this happened last year)
• The stream that flows from the wheelchair rental down to the park entrance was off. The channel looked bone-dry and filled with dry leaves, so it doesn’t look like it’s run in a while.

That’s on top of several other water features the park has lost over the past handful of years:

• The moat around DarKastle/Koaster was filled in with dirt and plants
• The stream flowing into the Rhine from around Verbolten’s final brake run has gone from a trickle to no longer running at all (at least not that I’ve seen)
• There was a small water feature in Land of the Dragons with a dragon’s tail emerging from a pool of water (separate from the water play area), but they removed the walls of the pool so it’s now a dry element
• The small pond and waterfall in the shady seating area in New France across from the bear statue was completely erased
• The small fountain on the Wild Reserve side of Aquitaine disappeared a while back; this one only lasted a few years to be fair

I find these losses disappointing because water features capture a unique harmony between art and nature. They’re soothing and kinetic and create a special kind of draw. Planters are nice, but they don’t add the same kind of personality to an area that a water feature does. I understand that running and maintaining water features can be expensive, but the beauty they add is invaluable. A decommissioned water feature always strikes me as a sad surrender — a decision to stop caring for something that once provided beauty and that was once deemed worthy of being cared for.

Fortunately, it’s not all bad news. The park has actually made a few improvements to their water features, mostly in the Wild Reserve:

• The smaller pond close to Lorikeet Glen was turned into a lovely new fountain with water burbling out of clay pots; this was changed last year
• The tiny “Toad Abode” pond in the far back left corner of the area by Lorikeet Glen, which was dry for several seasons, has water again and even has a new bubble fountain
• The larger Wild Reserve pond by the gazebo, while not new, always seems to have lovely new landscaping; the park seems to take a lot of pride in this particular pond (which incidentally is also my favorite water feature in the park)
• The Roman Rapids entrance sign, another one of my favorite water features in the park, was running at full blast yesterday; I’ve seen it variably not running or just running at a trickle over the past several years
• While not a “new” water feature, the addition of Finnegan’s Flyer afforded a new view of a previously unseen small stream that flows from the Wild Reserve (starting with the waterfalls in Eagle Ridge and Wolf Valley and flowing under Threadneedle Bridge) and behind the buildings in Killarney. You can see it from the Finnegan’s Flyer queue.
• It’s been a whopping 13 years now, but I want to give some love to the waterfall/pond at the very top of the park entrance area, which was added in 2013. I’m pretty sure this was the park’s last net-new water feature (not counting the short-lived Aquitaine fountain)
• Edit to the above: I forgot about the panning for gold water feature in New France, which I think was added around 2016

Finally, I’ll close out with a bit of a shocking discovery I made yesterday. I’ve been going to BGW my entire life, and yesterday was the first time that I realized there’s a stream that flows next to the Wilkommenhaus:


I’ll kick this off as a discussion. What’s your take on the removal of water features at BGW? What are your favorite BGW water features?

 

[warfelg]

The removals are of course disturbing. I feel as though water features bring a lot to spaces in terms of helping with ambiance, but also they help areas tend to stay cooler and add a pleasing background noise.

As for some of the creek beds, I don't know if this is why they are dry but much of VA is in drought conditions (| U.S. Drought Monitor) so it might be water conservation to limit usage in some places. And it looks like it might not get much better (Map Viewer | U.S. Drought Monitor) in the coming weeks.

 

[Timchat2]

Really unfortunate to hear about the fountains at Il Teatro di San Marco. During our first visit to BGW in the early 2000s I distinctly remember noting those features during a performance. While maybe not as flashy as a major ride, it was the kind of thing that really showed how Busch Gardens was somewhere special.