Imagicaa Water Park

When my boys were little, we enjoyed several trips to The Great Wolf Lodge. For those unfamiliar, it is an indoor water park throughout the US. They have some traditional water slides but also usually two very big ones that shoot you through very quickly or make you rotate in a gigantic sphere– all while on innertubes. It is all completely enclosed and kept at warm temperature so you can literally go anytime during the year. Its crowded, its dirty, the food and drinks are ridiculously overpriced, but it is a ton of fun. It is with these memories that we found ourselves making an important decision – if this was the experience in the US what would an Indian outdoor water park be like? Enter stage right….IMAGICAA (said in a movie announcer voice).

Imagicca is about 90 minutes east of Pune, about halfway to Mumbai. It is off in the mountain region and is fairly off the beaten path. Imagicca consists of two parks – an amusement park and a water park. We just went to the water Park. Prices for admission were 1,000 rupees ($12) on a normal day but because it was Water Wednesday we got ours for 800 rupees ($10). Parking was 200 rupees (about $1.50). So as you can see this is a waterpark everyone can afford. And as with any park you have to eat concessions right? We had a full lunch, including some beer and wine, for about $25 for all of us.

Look at those faces – we might be smiling over the fact they had a ton of western food for lunch Or the fact our entire lunch cost $25. As you can see it was pretty decent.

Ok now that I have covered how relatively inexpensive everything was, lets get to the park itself. Here is a map of the entire water park which shows you what they cover:

When you arrive you go through the main gates and then you have to take these old buses up a huge hill to get to the waterpark entrance (the water park is higher up the mountain than the theme park which is at the parking lot level). They have a gigantic locker room/changing room as well as a ton of restrooms (which were impressively clean surprisingly). So the highlights:

The Slides: Those of you that know me know that I am 1) scared of water and 2) scared of heights. So you can imagine how intimidating this park was for me. However I always have lived by the “you have to face your fears” mantra. Now I will never go skydiving but could I go on a waterslide with my family and experience a temporary life before my eyes flash? Yes. There were numerous long water slides that all had about the same procedure:

Cram yourself in to a tube: depending on the ride it could be 1, 2, 3, or 4 people.
Hold on to the handles and NEVER let go.
Wait for 20 minutes to get on the ride and expect the ride to generally take about a minute.
Get ready to see your families heads, shoulders, and arms flailing all over you as you shoot through tubes, get launched in to a large cylinder, or glide quickly into a shallow pool.\

I think this one was called Raging River.

I think this one was called the Screamer and as Nathan said “Ya Ya made it live up to its name”.

I was very afraid to go on this one but ended up folding to peer pressure. It scared the living hell out of me.

Here are the boys being launched up on one of the slides.

The Beach:

There is a huge beach area at the end of the park. It has beach sand at the beginning and then a huge pool of water that has continual waves in it so you feel like you are on an ocean beach. I forget the name of it but there was a DJ playing all sort of familiar pop and rap songs. They didn’t open the beach until about noon but when they did everyone poured in (it was a good time to get concessions and use the washrooms). It was so fun. If it wasn’t for the fact I would have become red with sun burn after 4 minutes of the intense Indian sun I would have joined in. Everyone was literally dancing, from ages 6 – 60, in a huge rave like style Miami Beach clubbing scene. It was hilarious.

Nathan showing his sister the party. That booth up top was where the DJ was at. Every 3-4 minutes he would say “Hey Akshay, your daughter is looking for you” or “Is there a Pramod out there because your wife needs the credit card”. It was funny and serious!

Quick Where is Waldo – Can you spot the lone blonde kid in this picture? Hi Nate!

The Kids Pool:

This area was just for younger kids. It had this enormous jungle gym complete with water slide all surrounded by a kids wading pool.

Mommy and baby feeling out the water. That big bucket in the top left that was filling up dumped water all over the crowd every minute or so.

It was fun for kids of all ages. There weren’t really any lines so the boys liked going down the slide and getting the bucket dumped on them.

We did the kid pool at the end which was a good wind down from the beach and slide scene. We also did a lazy river ride which was fun and gave us a chance to rest our adrenal glands.

We got there around 10am and left around 4pm. We were all pretty beat. Between all the stimulation and the intense sun, our energy was zapped.

I have to say, I had a wonderful time and look forward to going back (and also trying the theme park). It is a fun way to be in the summer heat but be in water. The crowds were all very respectful of our personal space – although as always they wanted photos or wanted to carry Tenley. I got to conquer my fear and find yet another thing off the beaten path to do while enjoying our life in India.