The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Park offers water thrills

Encore Theatre adds younger production
11/6/09
Chinese acrobats swoop into area this weekend
11/6/09
LegacyFest concert Oct. 23 celebrates Miami’s birthday
10/18/09
> More headlines

By Richard O Jones, Staff Writer 6:49 PM Thursday, June 4, 2009

FAIRFIELD — Thanks to a new water attraction at Joyce Park, you no longer need a boat to enjoy the thrill of water-skiing.

Water Nation, “a cable wakeboarding facility now located in Joyce Park, allows visitors to take a 1,800-foot ride around a manmade lake pulled by cables rather than a speedboat.

It’s only the seventh such facility in the United States, according to owner Peter Kennedy.

He first encountered it while accompanying his father-in-law on a medical mission to Naga City in the Philippines a couple of years ago. There was a “cable park” near the hotel he was staying. “It was beautiful,” he said. “I took one spin and I was hooked.”

When he got back to Los Angeles, where he was living at the time, he started researching and found there were only a few in the United States and that the inventor of the cable system that tows the wakeboarders was a German named Bruno Rixmen.

So he went to Germany and Rixmen took him on a tour of some of the 40 cable parks there.

“He told me what was good and bad about each one,” Kennedy said, “so we formulated what we believe is the greatest cable park in the world.”

The next step was finding a place for it. He first searched Los Angeles, but suitable property was far too expensive for a start-up operation, and in his second choice of Denver, there were too many issues of mineral rights for the water. So having some family in Cincinnati, he decided this would be a good place to launch his operation. The next-closest cable park is in Kansas City, he said, and the rest are in Florida and Texas.

He closed on the Joyce Park site in August 2008, and began construction of a 10-acre lake near the River Road entrance.

The cables run an 1,800-foot loop around the lake, pulling wakeboarders at speeds up to 45 mph — but the system is set at a more leisurely 18.5 mph.

There are currently three obstacles for wakeboarders to do tricks on if they dare, and he hopes to have three more in place.

Wake Nation is a “pay-as-you-play” facility with rates by the hour, the day or season. Parking and admission to water sports complex are free, including access to an outdoor 3,000-square-foot observation deck that offers a panoramic view of the entire lake area.

So far, the reception has been excellent, Kennedy said.

“The biggest challenge we have is we don’t have a year-round season,” he said. “But as I plan to be open from April to the first of November.”

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.

How to go

What: Wake Nation Cincinnati

When: 10 a.m. until dark through October

Where: 201 Joe Nuxhall Way, Joyce Park, Fairfield

Admission: $20 one-hour pass; $35 full-day pass, plus equipment rental

For more information: (513) 887-9253; www.wakenation.com.

Share this article