Hydrous Wake Park

Sumant Manne

a month ago

tl;dr: you won't learn to wakeboard here I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed. This park is probably great if you can already wakeboard, especially cable wakeboarding. But manage your expectations if you’re new and you want to learn to actually wakeboard. I visited in May yet I’m coming back to write this review in August. That’s how disappointed I am because this frustrating experience could have been great. I called ahead to get their recommendation on whether to book a private lesson to try wakeboarding for the first time. I know how hard it is to start on a board and I was also bringing my dad. She said no, we could just show up and people would be able to help us. While they were able to get us outfitted and moving on kneeboards, there was little helpful advice beyond what would have fit on a sheet of paper. If you just want to kneeboard around the park, you’ll probably have a good time. But that is all they seemed prepared to do. Unfortunately, my dad could not do even that because of mobility issues with his knees, but they didn’t offer any adaptive tips for him to at least attempt to kneeboard with some modifications. While almost everyone there was a first-timer starting on a kneeboard, including myself, not a single person during our visit graduated to a wakeboard. No one told to round the corners or you would get bucked off. You are setup to fail and you are expected to endure your own trial by fire to learn on your own. They didn’t seem to care about helping you succeed and treated it like a theme park ride. For background, at that point I had more than 50 days of snowboarding experience (I’m living in NYC now) with some experience in expert terrain and terrain parks. I have undergone a lot of trial by fire experiences with my feet strapped onto a board. But at the least, I felt like I was making some progress each time. While I don’t think that snowboarding automatically means I would be a good wakeboarder, I was ready to endure one more trial. I should have been the most enthusiastic person there. But I realized after a while I would never actually learn to wakeboard in the conditions this park setup. I only made it around the park on a kneeboard because I watched a bunch of YouTube videos the night before. Since I succeeded so quickly with a kneeboard, I tried actually launching with a wakeboard, but there was no actual help. I was offered incredibly helpful tips as “hold the handle tighter” and “keep your board up” by the guys running the tow on what felt like a ridiculous fast launch speed for a first-timer wakeboarder. There was no coach that could offer useful tips to get you in the right direction (ex. slow the cable for your first launch, weight distribution, edge management, trying a different launch technique) so you at least felt like you were progressing each time. For reference, in my case the issue seemed to be my weight needed to be even further back than how the tow operators positioned me and what I thought, but of course I only figured this out weeks later. ChatGPT would have done a better job. This is the first time I felt like I was entirely wasting my time on a board. My dad never learned to kneeboard and I was pretty turned off from the sport. We left early and I doubt I will ever get my dad into a board sport. If the park had done ANY of the following, this might have been a four or five star review: * They could have said “yes, take a private lesson.” * They could have tried to slow the tow temporarily during a launch for beginners. * They could have had someone who actually had some practice coaching beginners. * They could have been some introduction video. * They could have set our expectations that you will just kneeboard. But since I’m not a wakeboarder, who knows? After all, it’s not like this park seemed to care to make me one. Pros: at least the value is good and they give you everything you need.