The Challenge
Originally built in 2016, Aquatopia is a small to mid-sized municipal water park serving constituents of all ages in the town of Fairfield, Australia a western suburb near Sydney. Several slide additions followed in the years after its opening as they continued to expand their offerings, and now Aquatopia found itself ready to expand once again. This time they wanted a ride that would serve as a multi-purpose attraction, one that would enable them to offer multiple programming offers for their guests to reach a wider demographic, as well as allow them to meet their growing capacity needs.
The Solution
Aquatopia decided on ADG’s Breaker Beach wave pool, the only wave pool on the market purposely designed and built to employ waves for boogie boarding and recreational waves. The project also included cabana areas, additional barbecues, shade umbrellas, new amenities and change rooms, and a multi-function all-weather covered area with stage and cinema screen for parties, ceremonies and moonlight shows.
This project posed many unique challenges that went beyond the scope of the wave system, including designing the bathymetry for a small footprint pool and an additional request to incorporate space within the pool for learn-to-swim programming. Working within a limited site plan, the challenge faced by ADG was to design and build this multi-programmable wave pool within a compact footprint of only 40-meters in length.
In addition, the client wanted to offer some learn-to-surf programming options for their guests. While the pool bathymetry and wave system were not optimal for this application, they were hoping to be able to run a wave pattern that could be deployed for a small learn-to-surf set up.
To create the wave system, ADG developed an enhanced version of their existing Breaker Beach boogie boarding pool and utilized a pneumatic computerized wave technology application that
allowed for precise wave performance monitoring and timing that the client could easily alter as desired. This enabled the park’s ride operators to tailor the waves for each type of application, for example, providing shorter wave intervals for recreational waves, and longer intervals for boogie boarding and learn-to-surf.
The Result
Planning and construction started on this project in late 2019 but completion was delayed until 2021 due to challenges created by the COVID pandemic. Due to travel restrictions brought about by the pandemic, ADG’s wave engineers were not able to be on site for the majority of the project. Hence, much of the work was done between ADG and the folks on the ground at Aquatopia through the incorporation of multiple remote technologies to program and commission the wave system. A first-time challenge that was quickly overcome through a tremendous collaborative effort between our clients and local contractors.
The wave pool opened in time for the start of Aquatopia’s 2022 summer season (in this case December 2021!) and was an immediate success with the parks patrons! They were boogie boarding, playing in the waves and even got some surfing sessions in, with even more planned for the coming seasons.
