Vernon’s waterpark opens this year with ‘terrifying’ new slides

Vernon's waterpark will have new adrenaline-inducing slides when it opens for the season at the end of June.

Splashdown Vernon, which opens on June 24, has added three brand new slides to excite thrill seekers, according to the company's website.

The three Aqua Rush slides are the fastest – and most terrifying – slides at Splashdown Vernon and add hundreds of feet of high-speed fun to the waterpark.

Two of the slides are fully enclosed "black hole" slides which the waterslides are pitching as "not for the faint of heart or claustrophobic."

The other is a steep open flume free-fall slide for "speed junkies."

READ MORE: Slippery slide: The decline of the Okanagan's waterslides

The slides were planned to be open during the 2022 season, but pandemic-era supply issues meant they sat unfinished throughout the year.

The waterpark has traditionally opened July 1, but this year it will open for the weekend before the Canada Day long weekend and is offering a $5 saving on tickets.

Vernon's waterslides originally opened in 1983 and was one of about a dozen in the southern Interior. The park has had several owners over the years before Cultus Lake Waterpark owner Chris Steunenberg purchased Atlantis Waterslides, as it was then called, in 2019 and renamed it Splashdown Vernon.

For more information and to buy tickets go here.


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Ben Bulmer

After a decade of globetrotting, U.K. native Ben Bulmer ended up settling in Canada in 2009. Calling Vancouver home he headed back to school and studied journalism at Langara College. From there he headed to Ottawa before winding up in a small anglophone village in Quebec, where he worked for three years at a feisty English language newspaper. Ben is always on the hunt for a good story, an interesting tale and to dig up what really matters to the community.