Kudos to the citizens of Lumby for building such an awesome spray park for their kids. Spray parks are popping up all over North America because they are a cost-effective way to provide safe water-based recreation with low maintenance and almost zero labour costs.
Vernon was one of the early adopters of spray parks with its facility at Polson Park. Over the years, spray park designers have discovered that children, especially toddlers, like water features which come up or sideways.
Most spray parks tend not to have features which rain down water from heights.
When these features are included, the water falling from above tends to be timed with a tippy-bucket or a predictably timed dump of water. In Regina, one park has a wonderful dragon which blows a huge stream of water on to the kids every 15 minutes.
It’s delightful to see hordes of kids come screaming to be sprayed with water by the dragon.
The Polson Park spray park, unfortunately, is almost all high rain-down water sprays which go on for extended time periods.
This is the main reason it is not used as extensively as it could be.
I believe a re-work is needed for the Polson Park spray park to take advantage of new understandings in spray park design.
In addition, I would commend converting the Lakeview Park peanut pool to a spray park similar to the Lumby spray park.
In the summer, two lifeguards are needed to ensure the safety of the children.
These labour costs could be eliminated by moving to a spray park design while also enhancing the recreation experience for children.
James Love
Vernon
