Kelly Slater's Artificial Wave
 

Let's please get a few of these at different cable parks around the country.

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Why at a cable park? Why not a separate park?

Pretty gnarly. I'd love to ride that!

Why not? Are you afraid the popularity of surfing would somehow squeeze out boarding there like it has on the lakes? If there's room, who cares?

Actually I wouldn't worry or care about that at all. I was just hoping to hear opinions and pros and cons of integrating this into a cable park vs. separate parks. I might worry that an already crowed park becomes more crowded. Any maybe it possible that wakesurfers would migrate to park surfing.

I don't think you'll ever see a park in California with both. It would require an enormous amount of real estate.

I'm sure wakeboarding purists would love any migration and I agree about the enormous amount of real estate needed.

There's no way that the majority of wakesurfers would migrate to riding this thing. Let's remember, most people that wakesurf do it because it's easy and you can't get hurt. I bet taking a digger on this thing could feel pretty similar to a wakeboard crash (which is what wakesurfers are afraid of).

Kelly Slater created this wave to be a high performance wave, not like the wave garden or snowdonia, which are more mushy and beginner friendly. If you have only wakesurfed and not actually surfed in the ocean (a lot) then you might get worked. Regardless, I would love to see this at a cable park but as C.I.E. J-Rod (jarrod) said it would get crowded and there would have to be time slots set up for when the wave pool is active and when the cable is running. Obviously both can't be done at the same time, but making the cable part smaller to make room for the wave park would be an asset for sure : ) I know for a fact that there are a lot of Pro Wakeboarders that would be stoked to see this at a cable park because they are surfers as well. This is an exciting time for surfers.

Nosing in on a surfboard is NOTHING like taking a digger on a wakeboard... it doesn't hurt at all (until you hit the bottom.. that's the part that hurts). It might if you're on one of those massive tahitian waves.

For reference - a typical wakeboarder rides... say 21-24mph? Someone did the math and said that in a perfect scenario, the fastest you could get on a pretty big wave is about 27 - and it goes down from there.

Reference: http://www.surfline.com/community/wh...ws.cfm?id=1163

..and big-wave surfers who actually had speed checked were significantly slower. The fastest of which was about 24.

http://www.surfertoday.com/surfing/5...ance-in-a-wave

its a sh@t starter thread lol

Wow this is pretty cool! I can only imagine how much this would cost to build and what the cost per wave would be to ride it! It's for sure 10x better and likely 10x more fun to ride than going behind any boat!

As for price, I heard the Wave Garden goes for about $10 million. (And comes with a guarantee that you will be the only Wave Garden in a particular region.) So, I'm sure this would be similar or more expensive.... There's a reason why there aren't too many (if any) built yet.

Wow!!!! To pay for all that plus running expenses u'd need atleast 50 people a day paying $50 a day everyday of the year just to break even!!!

Still looks 10x more fun than running behind a boat wave.

50 people a day, every day of the year, would be no problem at all in a bigger city. I live in the Chicagoland area and I'd bet that if they built it here, you wouldn't be able to get on the damn thing. I wonder what the max capacity of it would be? Maybe something like hour long sessions. Maybe 5 guys per side of each wave, so 10 guys per hour. You could easily book that thing for 10-12 hours per day here, maybe even longer. I think you could charge $40-$50 per hour. 100 guys per day at $40 per hour - $4,000 per day, 365 days = $1.46M in sales. If it cost 10M to build + the cost of the land in a big city + expenses of running it per year (can you imagine what the insurance would cost?) I think it'd take a while to see any profit from it. You might be able to charge more, here atleast. I mean...my wife just paid $14 per hour, per kid for them to jump on trampolines at sky zone. Two kids for two hours cost $56 for them just to jump on trampolines......

Yeah but especially in Chicago land your not gonna get 365 days of use, weather sucks a lot of those days. Just don't ever see this making money.

Like my dad used to say, "It is a bargain, at half the price".

http://www.wavegarden.com/lang/en-us...ics/investment

According to this it is 7 million euros or $7.6 million dollars, including the planning for the lagoon, etc....

From beginning of this thread to now went from $10 million to $7.6 million, so basically it is depreciating as fast as most nautiques.

Still looks 10x more fun than running behind a boat wave.[/QUOTE]

So is mowing the lawn.

If we ever seen one of these available to the public in California, I would expect more like 100$ per day.

So is mowing the lawn.

[/QUOTE]

That just made my day. Thanks :)

So is mowing the lawn. [/QUOTE]


Bahahaha! That's funny as hell Jarrod! Pretty true though. The only time I've ever wake surfed was when I was rehabbing from knee surgeries.

If we ever seen one of these available to the public in California, I would expect more like 100$ per day.[/

J. - this one is in Lemoore, CA. Wonder if he will open it to the public or keep it for R&D.

It looks like they converted a water ski lake from aerial photos. I wonder what the cost would be if you already had an established ski lake.

actually its right next to the water ski lake.. look to the right and you can see the lifts, excavation, and the sled run thats under construction.

Yeah that also used to be a waterski lake as well.

Agree, it'd have to be indoors which would really drive the cost. And again, I think it'd be a long time (if ever) before there was any profit. But, imagine a surf contest going off on a Friday night prime time with a predictable start time / end time, and good predictable waves. TV would get interested in covering this. Its would almost be a new sport and could be much more accessible, which then makes it much more marketable. Very long term it could work, but you'd need some big bucks behind it to get it going.

this is cool but cost 3X more than a cable park so I doubt we will see many if any at all at that price point..no way to integrate that into an existing parks lake but no reason if theres real estate and available water you couldn't put it in the same park area..

BSR in Waco has many extra lakes beside the main lake, they have the barefoot and the completion wake lake already there on the property plus the river etc.. I could see Parsons doing something like this over at BSR..

Another reason I don't think you'll see many of these surf parks is that outside of current beach towns, there are so few people who know how to surf. I'm sure surfing on these manufactured waves is considerably easier than the real deal - you don't have to pound your way through the beach break just to get out there, the peak is in a predictable spot on every wave, etc. - but surfing is not wake surfing. It actually takes talent. I think a surf park would have a hard time finding repeat customers.

our city put this in and its been huge for boise.

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