Big Splash Summer 2004
It's been five years since visitors were encouraged to get wet at Ocean Park, with the attraction's pools and slides closed in 1999.
But Hong Kong's only operational amusement park now hopes to attract families to its Big Splash Summer promotion, which opens today and runs until August 31. The promotion offers families 'an exciting reprieve from the heat of the day' and 'a world of fun and challenging games'.
Excited, I stopped first at the Foam Fantasy and Foam Fantasy for Kids, which promises a blizzard of foam while I dance to 'the disco beat and funky, flashing lights'. It looked good fun, but don't expect the foam on demand - the Foam Fantasy opens only on Saturday nights. The children's version operates every day, however.
My next stop was the Fountain Spectacular, where sensors pick up your movements and switch on amazing, three-metre sprays of water.
The best of the new attractions is the Watermania Maze in which you're ambushed with water. The forest setting is amazingly realistic and, just to make sure you really do get wet, participants are given water guns to use on each other. But again watch out: floors get slippery when water builds up. The big down side is that it's an adults-only game, so you can't lose the kids in the maze.
