Keep cool, gamers: Wild Water Adventure Park guests have opportunity to name the new video game-like waterslide

Times are changing. And it appears Clovis’ Wild Water Adventure Park is transitioning right along with it — well, kind of.

The 42-year-old local oasis has established itself as one of the area’s summer hotspots, drawing in visitors each season with the park’s staple variety of family-oriented activities and wet and wild fun. Most importantly, it still feels like a destination after all these years.

“We’re off the beaten path,” said Wild Water Adventure Park general manager, Bob Martin. “We’re a longer drive so people stay longer when they get here. We’ve become a tradition.”

In fact, a third of guests have no intention of riding Wild Water Adventure Park’s plethora of water attractions, Martin added, with many taking advantage of the barbecue pits, grassy areas and three lakes filled with Bass, Catfish, Bluegill and Crappie fish found on the park’s grounds.

But this season, it’s all about bringing attention back to the action. Enter: Slide Boarding.

This summer, Wild Water Adventure Park presents thrill-seekers with a new, innovative waterslide gaming experience that will get even the most devoted of gamers off the couch and outdoors. That’s right — a fusion of the traditional and technological is finally here.

The park’s popular Vertigo slide is being transformed into a competitive water adventure that challenges riders to travel down on a specially designed raft, and match the ride’s flashing red, yellow, blue and green LED lights with the corresponding colored-buttons outfitted on the board as they pass by.

The tube’s hidden sensors help tabulate the guest’s score, allowing casual and novice riders to start at the ride’s lowest difficulty level of attempting to match just one color and more ambitious and familiar riders to ramp it up a notch with multiple colored lights.

A scoreboard at the end records the day’s scores, and encourages competitors to test their friends through social media.

“Wild Water Adventure Park is pleased to offer an innovative and immersive video game-like experience to the Fresno/Clovis area that can only be found in a few other select places across the country,” said Kathy Siggers, Wild Water Adventure Park chief operating officer. “We’re confident our visitors won’t be able to get enough of the new ride, and we’re excited to see it in action.”

And that’s not all. Wild Water Adventure Park is holding a “Name the Slide Contest” for the Slide Boarding attraction’s official moniker through its Facebook page, prompting guests to submit and vote on potential names before the ride opens early this summer.

Season passes are currently on sale starting at just $49.99 through June 19th. The park will open daily for the summer season on Saturday, May 28 for Memorial Day Weekend.

Wild Water Adventure Park is located at 11413 East Shaw Ave. in Clovis. For more information about the attraction, pricing, season passes, group outings or upcoming events, visit www.wildwater.net.

This story was originally published May 19, 2016 at 1:26 PM with the headline "Keep cool, gamers: Wild Water Adventure Park guests have opportunity to name the new video game-like waterslide."