Interactive Water Play Family Slides

The Challenge:

Bloxwich Active Living Centre approached us to transform the poolside of their teaching pool and turn it into a water play area for children of all ages and ability groups. With no pre-existing water play features, our customer required the main pool to be free from play equipment. This would ensure that children can play within the teaching area while the main pool is used for more traditional and advanced swimming lessons.

Our Solution:

Our team recommended a range of water play features which are well-suited to being installed poolside. This is all whilst aiming to increase water confidence in toddlers and young children using a combination of low-level water play features, suitable for those who don’t want lots of water splashing onto them from high levels.

When coming up with the design, we made sure our features were bright and colourful to capture the imaginations of young minds while providing learning through play scenarios.

Interactive wall panel (4m long)

The panel features a bright underwater design with a series of moving parts providing tactile, visual, and auditory stimulation. The panel is double-sided to encourage play on both sides and features several small water jets to bring water play to the area.

There is also a panel touch play package. With two sensors and two speakers, when a sensor is pressed an instruction will be heard via the speaker with a range of commands such as "blow bubbles".

Under the sea themed toddler slide

The slide features:

·         A bright and colourful design 

·         A tactile surface

·         Moving elements 

·         Mirrors

All these features bring an additional element of play and excitement to a traditional toddler slide. 

Snake squirt:

The snake features a series of moving water jets along its detailed body, allowing children the enjoyment of manipulating the flow of water to the jets by covering different jets. It is a fantastic feature to help children who are starting to get confident with water.

Results:

The old poolside has been transformed into a bright and colourful interactive water play area, with new life injected into it. Through a wide variety of tactile, auditory and visual interactive features, the transformed play area keeps children and families entertained; all whilst allowing the centre to run additional play sessions on the poolside.

Client Feedback:

‘Although Bloxwich Active Living Centre was only eighteen months old, we recognised that the traditional teaching pool was not attracting young families for recreational swimming to the levels that it should have, given the local demographics. The team at Hippo were extremely helpful during the design stages, and the installation was done in such a way that disruption to the operation of the pools was minimal. 

Hippo’s product quality and aftercare is excellent, and the impact in the first year was a 32% increase in usage by under five’s and a 22% income increase for pay as you swim sessions in that pool alone.’

Stuart Webb, Acting Service Manager.