Europe introduced hourly passes for privately owned spas and fun parks more than 20 years ago. This concept offers several major advantages.

Value Perception

Large outside Waterparks are usually visited for a whole day. Since tickets are usually “Day Passes” the perception exists that if you cannot make a whole day available you will get the full value of a ticket. This perception drastically reduces the number of daily visitors and as a consequence these parks are busiest in the summer and on weekends when families with children can plan to spend a whole day. The research from the World Waterpark Association shows that the average time spent in a waterpark is 3.91 hours.

We will offer “2 hr”, “4 hr” and “full day” tickets at different price levels. Our research in Europe shows that 70 % of visitors will buy a 4 hr pass and 20 % will buy a 2 hr pass. With this ticketing system visitors can come as late as  8:00 pm and buy a 2 or 4 hour ticket while still knowing that they will get the full value of their ticket.

Capacity

If the capacity of the facility is 1200 people at any given time, the hours of operation from 10:00am to 10:00pm daily and most visitors stay 3.91 hours, a daily potential of 3600 visitors exist. This number will be considerably lower if only daily passes are sold and visitors are allowed to stay all day.  In fact if everybody stays the whole day the limit is 1200 visitors daily.        

There are a dozen manufacturers of electronic hourly ticketing systems.  The heart of these modern systems is a RAM Chip which is incorporated i.e. in a wrist watch.  When buying your ticket you will receive this “electronic ticket (ET)”. Once you enter through the gate your time is running. Visitors are expected to track their time. Should they like the facilities and end up staying longer they simply will have to pay an extension fee as they leave the park. This system has many other advantages. You can use it like a credit card in the park or you can prepay and deposit a certain amount prior to entering the facility. The ET will open and close lockers, and allow you to buy food and drinks or extra services like massages.

Based on the hourly ticketing system we expect the following visitor distribution on weekdays and weekends for an average week/weekend day:

As can be seen in the table above, the maximum load during a weekend day would approach 600 visitors to the park.  Assuming that the visitor distribution can be guaranteed the park would need to be sized to accommodate a load of 600.  However this would not allow the facility to benefit from very busy days. As an example the busiest day in the Kurhessen Therme Kassel in Germany, which has a facility load of 1200 people, was 4000 daily visitors. It is expected that there will be peak hours.

For above mentioned reasons Winnipeg Eco Water World Parks Inc. with its advisers has determined that the facility load will be established at 1200 visitors and the park shall be sized and designed accordingly.  The facility initially will have lockers for 1000 guests. This capacity can be expanded to 1200 as necessary.

In addition the building was conceptually designed to be expanded in the future if necessary. The Leisure and Fun World can be added on to allow for more attractions as can the Wellness World if visitor levels are high. Change facilities can also be expanded with an expansion of the attractions.