Anatomy of a Superflume

There are many different elements that make up our Flume rides. Some of these essential, while some help to make a park’s attraction unique to them as well as more exciting for guests to enjoy.

During the design stage of our Flume ride is when we usually start to ask about the kind of things our client might want to include in their attraction. But when we start talking in water ride jargon, it can get confusing it can get a bit overwhelming. So we’ve made a handy jargon buster guide to help, whether you’re looking to design your own or just those who want to learn more about each the elements that make up our, sure-to-soak, flume rides.

This is where riders board and may also disembark, depending on the design of your ride. The ride queue will begin here and boats with temporarily stop in the station whilst riders board before setting off on their adventure.

This conveyor belt helps to take the guests in their boat from a lower level of water to the top of a hill before they are plunged down the splash chute. The boat clings to a rubber material on rollers then pulls the boat to the top of the hill.

Arguably the most fun part of a Flume ride is the Splash Chute. This is where the boat reaches the top of the hill it’s been pulled to the top by the Conveyor belt and is then pushed, by the water current, down the steep drop into the splash pool at the bottom. The splash chute’s elevation can be of any height and steepness, depending on how scary you want the drop to be.

If you want to shake things up a bit, try including a backwards splash chute into your design. Riders won’t know what’s coming as they plunge down backward in an unexpected backwards motion down a steep elevation into the splash pool. In order to achieve the backward orientation, a boat is typically rotated on a turntable at the top of the lift hill.

What’s the fun of a gigantic splash at the bottom of a flume if it isn’t getting everybody wet? On-lookers can watch the final splash of your flume ride from an accessible walkway that allows them to get splashed as well as your riders. You may even choose to add water guns to these walkways to allow passers-by to soak riders even more.

For a flume rider to appeal to guests it needs to have some theming to help set the scene of the ride. Whether it be a detailed story-driven experience or a traditional wooden log flume experience, theming elements help to tell the story and make the ride more aesthetically pleasing to draw riders on board as well as for them to look at throughout the experience.

Animatronics are animated, lifelike character robotic models that move and interact with riders to help bring a narrative to life, tell a story or as context to an environment. Adding Animatronics into your flume ride experience can be a great way of spicing up slower areas of the ride where the boat is meandering along the river at a slower speed – giving riders something to look at.

Often in compact areas, usually in indoor attractions, there isn’t much room for both a gradual incline of a lift-hill and a splash chute. To resolve this sometimes we’ll design your attraction using a boat elevator instead. The boat enters a giant elevator, is locked into position and then travels up to the top of the lift hill vertically, where it is then released down the chute.