BY TOBY HENRY
The June 7 free day at the Liquid Planet Water Park drew hundreds of residents to a new attraction that many local families say they’ll be coming back to.
“It’s small enough, it’s clean, and I think we’ll be going for the season pass,” said Rhonda Thyng, Candia School Board member and mother of four.
“It really killed me to see the lifeguards in the splash area with huge life preservers when the water was only, what, 2 feet deep or something like that?” said her husband, Clark. “But I guess it’s better to be too safe. The really good thing is that this is going to bring a lot of people to our town, and they’ll also be buying gas and eating in our restaurants.”
Rhonda and Clark Thyng were among the more than 500 people who turned out for the park’s official “dry run.” The official ribboncutting for the park’s first official opening day for the general public is Saturday, June 14.
On June 4, Candia Planning Board members told building inspector Bill Hallock and park owner Kevin Dumont that the occupancy permit for the park could be issued, and by the time of the June 7 free day, the town’s biggest seasonal attraction was more than 90 percent complete.
Some minor changes were made to the site in comparison with the site plan the Planning Board approved last year, but Hallock said these were due to ledge at the site, a common problem in many Candia construction projects. The position of the park’s two large water slides had to be changed from an east-west to a north-south orientation, and the main entrance building, originally designed straight, was built with a chevron-shape.
While a few landscaping touches still remained on June 7, residents appeared oblivious to the few bare patches of ground and instead focused their attention on the spray ground. Scores of children and adults gathered around the playground-type amusements as water shot in all directions, and numerous lifeguards and staff members could be observed supervising the scene throughout the day.
“Everything so far is great, and the staff is very attentive too,” said local mother Stacy McKissick, who went to the park with her 6-year-old daughter, Sarah. “She can meet up with her friends here, and the size of the crowd is just perfect.”
Nearby, Sarah seemed excited at the prospect of having a water park in her own hometown. “It’s great! I really like the big orange slide,” she said. “But when I went down the tube slide and landed in the pool, it was so cold!”
Local father Joe Vallaincourt agreed. “It’s really nice, very family- oriented,” he said. “So far, it seems very good.”
Nicole Ferron, a Candia mother, said the park’s modest size makes it relatively easy to keep track of her children, age 3 through 8, as they played at the spray ground.
“It’s so small that you really can see everything, and it seems like it is geared toward smaller kids,” she said.
Staff members across the park reported no major incidents that day, with the few issues being some older children who were issued warnings not to run and some disappointed younger children who did not meet the 4- foot minimum for the big slides. Dumont explained that because the splash-down pool itself is 4 feet deep, regulations dictate that the slide riders also have to be at least 4 feet tall.
Dumont said the park’s ribbon- cutting is scheduled for Friday, June 13, with the first official day of public admission to follow on June 14. The park will be open until Sept. 1, he said, and one new attraction might be added every year or two.