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Escape winter’s wrath with an indoor water park weekend

So the cold winter weather has you dreaming of palm trees, sandy beaches and the warm waters of the Caribbean, but you can’t spare more than a weekend away?

The next best thing may be within easy driving distance and open year-round.

Indoor water parks are the latest recreation craze sweeping the U.S. The parks -- packed with water slides, giant buckets of falling water and water basketball courts -- attract families to expensive hotel suites for weekend vacations in cold-weather climates.

A total of 144 indoor water parks are now open, up from 50 in 2002, according to Hotel Water Park Resorts Construction Report. An additional 99 are planned.

“The ordinary hotel swimming pool is becoming a thing of the past,” industry consultant Jeff Coy said. He predicts more than 36,000 hotel rooms will be connected to indoor water parks by the end of the year, up from about 8,500 in 2002.

The lure of indoor water parks reflects a change in Americans’ vacation habits. Families take more short vacations, especially two- or three-day getaways planned on short notice, in addition to a big summer vacation.

A family suite typically rents for $200 to $500 a night, depending on the time of year and the suite’s size. The admission fee to the water park is included in the price of the room.

What’s really driving the indoor water park is the changing nature of American childhood.

“Kids want to be entertained nonstop,” said Stan Anderson, owner of the Polynesian Resort in Wisconsin Dells, Wis. “They want fast action, and they want it in a hurry.”

What Nashville is to country music, Wisconsin Dells is to the water park business. The region has 18 such parks. Many entrepreneurs and designers who have taken the concept nationwide still call Wisconsin home.

Indoor water parks spread first to other Great Lakes states. They are arriving on the East and West coasts and being added to ski resorts and recreational vehicle parks. Even warm-weather Florida and Arizona are getting indoor parks.

“People ask, ‘Aren’t you worried that water parks are a fad?’” said Scott Somerville, father of three young boys and president of Focus Lodging Group, which operates Fort Rapids, an indoor water park in Columbus, Ohio. “My response is, ‘This fad will last as long as kids keep enjoying water.’”

One study showed that the Chicago area alone could support 40 regular indoor water parks or 12 giant ones, Somerville said. The East Coast has three indoor parks, he said.

His company is developing a water park in Merrimack, N.H., that he says will be the first one at a Marriott hotel. A Sheraton hotel near Boston is adding one, too. Other projects:

•Great Wolf Resorts, the largest operator of indoor water parks, is building them near Cincinnati, Dallas and Seattle.

•Small cities -- such as Omaha, Neb., Rockford, Ill., and Newark, Ohio -- are getting water parks, even though they are not big tourist destinations.

•Silver Mountain ski resort in Kellogg, Idaho, will open one in July. It’s the first Western resort to feature the amenity, Coy said.

“We have lots of great rooms, and we need a way to keep them full outside the winter,” Silver Mountain sales director Stephen Lane said.

Indoor water parks are usually available only to hotel guests. Most parks are aimed at kids up to age 14. They are regional destinations, attracting families within a three-hour drive, and don’t compete directly with mega-theme parks such as Disney World. Guests seldom stay longer than three days.

What you get: giant slides for big kids, wading pools for little ones, a water basketball court and perhaps a slow-moving river. The big slides can stretch eight floors high and sometimes go outside the building before returning indoors.

The parks get bigger every year. Some exceed 100,000 square feet, about the size of a Wal-Mart.

“You used to put a slide in a pool and call it a water park,” said Matthew Freeby, a water park designer at Water Technology in Madison, Wis. “Now people expect theme-park-style entertainment.”

Dennis Cauchon writes for USA Today.