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LEGOLAND® Water Park to bring new rides, jobs
By Matt Reinstetle
Ledger Media Group
Jan. 25, 2012
WINTER HAVEN - More jobs and water rides will be coming to LEGOLAND® Florida
when LEGOLAND Water Park opens in early summer.
LEGOLAND Water Park will feature seven new attractions and will cost $12 more
per ticket for guests ages 3 and older and $3 more for children age 2 and
younger, park officials shared with media during a tour Tuesday.
An estimated 250 jobs will be created, including a large staff of lifeguards.
The park is tentatively set to open in May, but LEGOLAND Florida General Manager
Adrian Jones said a definitive date will be set in the upcoming weeks.
“The park is doing very well at the moment, the fact that we are trying to bring
it forward as quick as we can, but we’re not going to rush ourselves,” Jones
said.
“Optimistically, we are going to make that announcement very, very soon, I am
very confident of how the work is progressing,” Jones said.
The park is designed for children ages 2-12, with the larger slides aimed for
older kids and the Duplo areas built for younger kids.
“We’ve really developed every area with the family in mind,” Wallace said. “We
inherited some pretty thrilling rides from Splash Island (the water park area at
the former Cypress Gardens), but the rest of the park is really geared toward
the family,” said LEGOLAND spokeswoman Jackie Wallace.
This will be the second LEGOLAND Water Park. LEGOLAND California opened in 2010.
“It’s a great time for us to open because we will go into being open seven days
a week for the whole summer. That will make a big difference for our guests,
coming in and being able to enjoy the water park all summer long,” said Jill
Swidler, marketing manager at LEGOLAND Florida.
The estimated 250 employees -- full time, part time and seasonal -- will work
exclusively at the water park.
Guests who buy a general admission ticket will not have access to the water park
at the north end of LEGOLAND, but a ticket office will be there if guests change
their mind. There are no stand-alone tickets fro the water park. LEGOLAND will
offer a Premium Annual Pass for $179 for adults and $159 for children 3-12 and
seniors 60 and over, plus tax, that includes LEGOLAND and the water park.
LEGOLAND passholders can update their tickets at the annual pass center.
LEGOLAND Water Park will consist of several elements from the original Cypress
Gardens Splash Island, which closed in 2009, but with a LEGO twist. The
attractions and surrounding area will be remodeled with LEGO statues and the
bright LEGO color paint scheme. Two of the seven upcoming attractions will be
new, including Duplo Splash Safari and the Imagination Station. (Duplos are the
larger, preschool-age blocks produced by LEGO.)
•Duplo Splash Safari is a shaded area where toddlers can play on slides and
interact with large Duplo animals with splash elements.
•Imagination Station is an interactive area where kids build bridges and dams
out of Duplo bricks and then test them with flowing water.
•Build-A-Raft River features inner tubes where riders can add on LEGO bricks to
customize their rafts and float along a 1,000-foot-long lazy river.
•LEGO Wave Pool is designed for all ages as gentle waves roll up. This is the
first LEGOLAND Water Park to have a wave pool.
•Joker Soaker is a large water playground.
•Twin Chasers are two enclosed and intertwined slides that.
•Splash Out, the tallest attraction in the park, is where guests pick one of
three slides and then speed down a 60-foot drop.
Jones said the water park was in far better condition than the original Cypress
Gardens when it was purchased.
“We knew (the water park elements) were in a bad state but not as bad as the
park,” Jones said. “So it means that we were able to move a lot quicker to get
the LEGOLAND Water Park attraction open.”
NewsChief.com
-end of report-
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