The rise of the adventure park
New adventure parks are being planned to meet growing demand for adrenaline-fuelled fun. Michael Hayward takes a closer look.
New Zealand has long been regarded as one of the world’s adventure-sport hot spots. Now parks that pay homage to that spirit of adventure are quietly sprouting throughout the country.
Typically based on a hill, the attractions offer gravity-assisted drawcards such as mountainbiking and ziplining, often supported by a gondola or chairlift and a cafe.
The concept is not exactly new; tourism strongholds Queenstown and Rotorua have offered gondolas which access adventure-type attractions such as luges or ziplines for years.
But in the last few years, this type of development has increasingly popped up in regions outside the New Zealand tourism powerhouses.
The ventures are trying to cash in on a growing appetite for experiences that feel risky but are run in a safe environment.
Despite an influx of major developments in the pipeline, and a move from ski fields into the market, both public and private organisations seem convinced there is room for plenty more parks.
The Christchurch example
The flagship effort in New Zealand to date is the $25 million Christchurch Adventure Park (CAP) – though it is hard to truly judge its success after it was badly damaged by the Port Hills fires, just weeks after it opened in December 2016.
CAP was built by Canadianbased development company Select Contracts (which has an office in Christchurch) and is owned by a partnership group called Leisure Investments NZ.
The government chipped in $2m to the development from a tourism fund in 2014. The Christchurch City Council invested $2m in the park through its urban development agency Development Christchurch (DCL), gaining a 14.29 per cent share.
Some capital to build the park was lent from the China Construction Bank. The council provided a $5m guarantee, which expires in 2020, as a condition of this loan.
Select Contracts regional director Darron Charity said that before Christchurch, the company had been looking globally for a long time to find the right place to bring the year-round gravity park operation to life.
He said in CAP’s first eight weeks, the park was close to 45 per cent of its expectations for the first year in the business case – the success before the fire proved to the world that this type of venture was doable.
How CAP is performing financially in the wake of the fires is difficult to gauge.
DCL’s 2016-17 Annual Report shows the park made a loss of $1.816m for that year, but that is based on revenue from only the eight weeks of trading before the fires.
The same report showed DCL devalued its investment to $1.3m at the end of the 2017 financial year due to the impact of the fires. This took into account a $1.89m insurance payout.
DCL’s 2017-18 annual report has been delayed and is not expected until early next year, so Stuff has been unable to gauge how the park has performed since it reopened.
Neither CAP nor DCL would comment directly on CAP’s financial performance, but Newman said it had not been a normal financial year as they had to spend a lot more to get the park reopened and had insurance money come in.
She said not many businesses closed down for almost a year after only being open for seven weeks, and they were delighted to still be open.
‘‘Now that we are coming into summer we are trending in the right direction – our numbers in October showed highest ever number of people on ziplines, highest number of bikers and uplifts since we have reopened.’’
The park has had more than 200,000 visits since it reopened, including 6500 zipliners and about 80,000 bikers.
Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel said that the council’s investment into the adventure park paved the way for a bigger private investment to be made.
‘‘It was able to get off the ground and that’s been really good for the city.’’
Dalziel said the decision was the right one to make at the time and knowing what she knows now she would still support the investment.
DCL chief executive Rob Hall said CAP was a leader in New Zealand and helped raise interest in and development of similar facilities.
‘‘The increase of more adventure parks in other parts of New Zealand is complementary to our own park and potentially serves to make New Zealand a destination for this sort of adventure activity.’’
What makes it work?
Select Contracts is one of the big players in the New Zealand adventure park scene; it is currently working on projects in Porirua and Cromwell, is looking at whether ziplines would be feasible in O¯ amaru, and has done work in Nelson, Rotorua, Reefton, Hanmer Springs and Wairarapa.
Charity said outside of the tourism hotspots of Queenstown and Rotorua, running multiple attractions as a single entity gave the most opportunity to be commercially viable.
He said one of the keys was to make sure the parks appealed to locals.
People were looking for excitement and adventure parks provided a sense of risk in a safe environment, he said.
‘‘We often get asked why are you thinking about putting another adventure park in Porirua when you’ve got one in Christchurch? Actually, that creates a link and a network.’’
Growth is also driven by skifields chasing year-round visitors.
NZSki runs the Remarkables and Coronet Peak in Queenstown and Mt Hutt in Methven. Chief executive Paul Anderson said skifields sit dormant for up to eight months a year.
Coronet Peak is putting in a Telemix (combined gondola/ chairlift) in time for the 2019 winter season, as part of a $35m upgrade.
Anderson said it would appeal to those visiting for the scenery as well as mountain bikers.
It follows a similar approach from Cardrona ski field near Wanaka, which has offered mountain biking and other summer activities since 2015.
At Porters skifield in Canterbury, a purpose-built mountain-bike trail starts from the door of the lodge, which is now open through the summer.
Porirua plans
After CAP, the next park to make major media waves is the Porirua Adventure Park, near Wellington.
The $31m park will offer an enclosed gondola with a cafe at the top, walking and mountain-bike trails, and a surf simulator at the bottom.
Both the resource consents and Department of Conservation concession necessary for the park were publicly notified this year.
Select Contracts hopes to start construction in September and to open a year later.
Charity said the Porirua park would be more focused on families and international tourism than its Christchurch equivalent.
When Select started working on the proposal, the company quickly found it could not be as bike-centric as the Christchurch park because of local weather and geographical constraints.
Charity said the company realised there was a ‘‘bigger play’’ in using Porirua to drive the Wellington destination tourism strategy, so it swapped from a proposed chairlift to a gondola (despite it adding a third again to the capital costs) to make it more attractive to the cruise ship and Asian markets.
The Porirua City Council will lease the land to the park and underwrite $4m of the project, dependent on the bank lending Select 60 per cent of the development cost.
An economic impact assessment by the consultancy firm MartinJenkins estimates the park will boost Porirua’s GDP by $9.6m a year and create about 171 jobs.
Cromwell adventure
Select has another project, on Northburn Station in Cromwell, in the early stages.
As far as what will be offered, Select is keeping its cards close to its chest, but Charity said it would start with a multi-launch swing platform which would be unique because of its scale. More attractions, including familyfriendly offerings, would follow.
The park aimed to take people out of the hustle and bustle of nearby Queenstown.
‘‘When you can be at a worldclass attraction within an hour of an international airport, tourists don’t think twice about that.’’
All going to plan, construction would begin about September next year, with a view toward a soft opening the end of the summer after.
Charity said Select was seeking investors, including the Provincial Growth Fund. This $3b, three-year Government investment scheme is aimed at boosting regional economic development.
A fund spokeswoman said it had two applications for funding to develop an adventure park. One was declined as it was in a region not covered by the criteria, while the other was progressing through the application process.
She said applications to the fund were assessed against criteria such as whether the project lifted productivity, added value, would be well managed and had local support or fitted local priorities.
Nelson developments
In the Nelson region, there is already one adventure park operating (though it recently changed name and owner), while another development is in the pipeline.
Nelson Adventure Park is the working name of the company looking to put a chairlift or gondola up the 793m Fringed Hill, which towers over the city.
The company was set up in February and is half owned by the local iwi, Nga¯ ti Koata, and half by local businesspeople.
Director Matt Griffin said the idea had been bubbling away for about eight years. It was initially proposed as a mountain-bike park but there had been ‘‘a bit of a journey’’ to move away from just catering for bikes.
Having recreational activities that did not require a high level of background skills to participate in was important, so groups and families could turn up and have fun, Griffin said.
The company has completed a feasibility study and was working on a master plan which would look at resource consent requirements and cost. It would then seek investment, and hoped to be ready to do so by the middle of next year.
Griffin said there was a good chance the company would be able to tap into investment from various sources, such as the Government, local business, iwi and councils.
He was not worried about the increasing competition as the recreational market was growing and there was an opportunity to create a diverse national network.
‘‘You think about when you go to Lake Tahoe skiing. The five skifields don’t see each other as threats, they see it as developing a wider offering and it’s actually a destination.’’
About 15 minutes’ drive northeast of Nelson is the Cable Bay Adventure Park. Formerly known as Happy Valley Adventures, the name was changed soon after Coast to Coast legends (and former owners) Richard and Elina Ussher took over in late 2017.
Richard Ussher said commercially he did not think Happy Valley worked because noone knew what it was.
He said moving to the name ‘‘adventure park’’ had made a big difference to getting people in.
The park currently offers the Skywire flying fox, quad-bike tours, horse treks, paintball, archery and argo amphibious allterrain vehicle tours. The couple plan to add a mountain-bike park, accommodation and an expanded cafe and bar in the coming years.
Like the others, he sees more adventure parks entering the market as complementary to his own operation.
It’s a view shared by Tourism New Zealand communications manager Candice Johanson. She said the parks were often in the regions and were open year-round, which aligned with the strategy to spread tourism benefits across the year and into the regions.
Johanson said Kiwis and international visitors had been demanding adventure experiences for a number of years and this was unlikely to change.
‘‘‘‘We often get asked why are you thinking about putting another adventure park in Porirua when you’ve got one in Christchurch? Actually, that creates a link and a network.’’ Select Contracts’ Darron Charity