Wave of Water Parks : Surfin’ in the U.S.A. Goes Inland

At the edge of Pennsylvania Dutch country, 100 miles and a two-hour drive from the nearest beach at the Jersey shore, Joe Guzman has spent his 16th summer surfing.

He rides translucent, chlorine-scented waves that crest and break, then roll onto a concrete deck at the only place he’s ever surfed: A water theme park in Allentown, Pa.

Each swell’s approach is signaled by a loud thump and a whoosh, the wheezing of machinery that has transformed a million-gallon pool into a crude facsimile of the Southern California coast.

Guzman and his buddies in Allentown are spending most of their time and much of their spare cash for the chance to skim over four-foot curling breakers right there in town. They are caught up in a renewed national obsession with surf culture. And they are among a growing number of inlanders who have found a way to get as close to an authentic surfing life as it’s possible to get without moving to the beach.

Wave-Making Machines

No longer does mere distance from the sea derail a would-be surfer’s dreams. No longer must the landlocked masses content themselves with dressing up in wildly patterned surf clothes and bleaching their hair, with “sidewalk surfing” on skateboards, “snow surfing” down mountains and “wind surfing” on placid lakes. Powerful new wave-making machines are in place at a few select locations. And as more designs come on the market, a tamer version of ocean surfing--but true surfing just the same--appears destined to become a familiar water sport.

The surf is up these days in Aurora, Ohio, in Greensboro, N.C., and in Saco, Me. Last month, the Rocky Mountain Surf Championship was held at a pool in Federal Heights, Colo., a suburb of Denver. Two weeks ago, among the pines and chairlifts at a ski resort about 60 miles northwest of Montreal, an audience of about 1,000 watched a contest at a 3-month-old wave pool. Promoters had no qualms about christening their event the “California Cooler Inland Surfing Classic.”

The imitation of the Golden State has even boomeranged home. In April, a surf pool opened at the Oasis, in Palm Springs. A rival desert pool, to be called Surf City U.S.A., is scheduled for completion by next summer in San Bernardino.

Since 1984, at least 10 water theme parks around the country and in Canada have installed wave pools that produce artificial swells up to six feet, more than three times larger than earlier man-made ripples designed for children’s romps. Manufacturers say about 20 more surf pools are in the planning stages. Surf pools are “the coming thing,” said Al Turner, president of the World Water Park Assn. “Every pool installed this year and next will probably have surf capacity.”

And for the entrepreneurs who want to bring the sport in from the beach, the timing couldn’t be better.

The new technology has emerged as surfing fervor sweeps the country, at its strongest since the craze inspired by the “Gidget” movies in the early 1960s.

$1-Billion in Surf Fashions

As construction of new surf pools proceeds, this is the backdrop: Wine cooler commercials feature Malibu beach parties. ESPN, the cable sports network, airs 61 showings of professional surf contests this summer, up from 10 last season.

The year’s sales of surf fashions are expected to top $1 billion for the first time. St. Louis teen-agers squabble over who has more surfer-brand T-shirts; a sexagenarian Philadelphia doctor buys a pair of the knee-length trunks called “jams.” Nearly 20,000 people pay $10 apiece for admission to a “surf party” at the Middle America Truck Stop in Williamsburg, Iowa, where promoters have imported 1,000 tons of sand and dubbed their creation “No Wa Wa Beach.” The highlight of the weekend bash is a competition on a contraption known as the mechanical surfboard, modeled after the mechanical bulls of the urban-cowboy era.

“These things tend to rise and fall. In the ‘50s, there were Ivy League clothes and then surfing. Now we’ve had the preppy look and then surfing,” said Jack Nachbar, a professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. “For young people, when there’s pressure to succeed, it might mean that conspicuous leisure is a more central part of their lives.”

‘Mass-Culture Fantasy’

Agreed Richard Crepeau, a sports sociologist at Central Florida University in Orlando: “It’s sort of a mass-culture fantasy, which is fairly common. Mental surfing is a relief from everyday stress.”

Those caught up in the fever offer less sophisticated versions of the same explanation. Derek Fisher, 13, of Creve Coeur, Mo., said he and his friends buy surf clothes because “everyone wants to go to the beach but it’s 500 miles away.” Murray Portnoff, 34, of Montreal, entered the “inland classic” to remind himself of his college days in Florida. After graduation, he said, half-jokingly, “I made the mistake of coming back,” ending up in the furniture manufacturing business.

The inland surf spots cost $800,000 to $5 million to build, about 20% more than the earlier, small-wave pools. The higher price buys the football-field-sized pool, a reef-like sloping bottom that shapes the waves for surfing and equipment that pumps, paddles or blows air on the water. A computer program determines the size and force of the breakers.

Barrage of Requests

Pool operators prefer to offer the facilities for swimming and body-boarding because they pack in more paying customers that way. But the surf contests and exhibitions originally intended as occasional promotions have led inevitably to a barrage of requests from locals who want to ride the waves themselves. Park owners are yielding to the pressure because the surfers also serve as an attraction.

Allentown’s Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom has a 90-minute surf session every morning and a 60-minute session every weekday evening. Demand has forced the Oasis in Palm Springs to increase the number of daily sessions from two to four. At Greensboro’s Water Country U.S.A., general manager Art Gibson said he wants to let local surfers use the pool next year in the hours before the park opens to the public. Montreal surfers are negotiating with the management at Mont Saint-Sauveur, in the Laurentian Mountains, to let them in the wave pool before 9 a.m. and after 5 p.m.

In that context, the vision of a regular inland surfing circuit, with hometown pool surfers competing against the ocean pros, doesn’t appear all that farfetched. “I think it’s about three years off,” said Richard D. Ireton, a San Diego County surfer who designs and markets one of the three brands of pool surf generators.

$25,000 Prize

Indeed, the international Assn. of Surfing Professionals has already held one contest at Allentown, with $25,000 in prize money and ratings points toward the championship. Executive director Ian Cairns said he hopes to eventually include five to 10 pool events in a 40-contest season. And the Professional Surfing Assn. of America, a California group that just finished its second year, is considering events next year at pools in this state.

Organizers of both circuits are well aware that a growing interest in surfing across the United States and Canada can only mean more sponsors, more television coverage and bigger cash prizes.

One measure of the way inland surfing has taken hold: The sport is already spawning its own slang. While ocean surfers say great waves are “radical,” inland surfers say strong swells created by several 100-horsepower engines are “really banging on all eight cylinders.”

Ocean surfers who edge their toes over the end of a board are “hanging 10.” Inland surfers who slide a board along the pool border are “hanging the wall.” If they get scraped in the process, they’ve contracted a case of “wall rash.”

‘Mechanical Low Tide’

When the wave-making equipment stalled during the early heats of the Canadian contest, announcer Hunter Joslin of Florida added a new term to the glossary. “This is known as mechanical low tide,” he intoned through his microphone as the pool’s churning surface stilled.

The occasional breakdowns are one problem facing the fledgling industry. There are others.

Surfing magazines sneer at the quality of the machine-generated waves. Reviewers have written that the pools don’t provide enough room for a long ride and the swells aren’t powerful enough to allow a surfer to get the speed necessary for the most spectacular maneuvers. In the latest issue of Surfing, a what’s-hot-and-what’s-not piece proclaimed that “the wave-pool concept, unfortunately, is out until they build one with larger turbochargers.”

And some ocean surfers are disdainful of the organized nature of inland surfing. Ocean surfers may think that cutting others off from a swell, or upsetting a stranger’s board, is simply part of the sport’s aggressive, individualistic tradition. But lifeguards at the pools see such moves as dangerous; they insist that the surfers politely take turns catching waves.

Hogging the Waves

The collision between the two schools of thought can be dramatic. At a morning session in Allentown, the regulars complained that a stranger from the shore was hogging the waves and grabbing their boards. His name was John Ward, and he didn’t think he’d really done anything wrong.

“I guess I never really figured out the rules,” said Ward, who drove to the pool from Bloomsbury, N.J., because ocean waves had been scarce for a month. “In the ocean, the first guy up on his board gets the wave. Pushing it to the limit is part of what surfing’s about.”

Despite such negative reaction from the nation’s beachfronts, “the pool surfing has all the potential of blossoming into something very, very strong,” said Gibson of the Greensboro theme park.

For spectators, the pool is a way of getting the closest look at surfing they’ve ever had. From the beach, ocean surfers who have paddled a good quarter of a mile out to sea are barely more than specks in the water. From pool side, a surfer’s grins, grimaces and subtle body shifts are in clear view.

Mystery Is Gone

And during competitions, the contestants are virtually assured of waves. It is not unusual for ocean surfers to wait several days for ridable breakers at a professional event, even at the most famous surfing beaches.

Though much of the mystery is gone when surfers know exactly what type of wave will roll out of the machine, the pros say that predictability can be a boon in competition. “The luck factor is gone. You can see who does the most with the same wave,” said Charles Kuhn, a 24-year-old from Cocoa Beach, Fla., ranked 16th on the international circuit. Kuhn placed third at the Allentown event in June, 1985, and first in the Canadian contest at Mont Saint-Sauveur.

For ocean surfers marooned far from the sea for one reason or another, the wave pools are a godsend. When Nancy Shun found herself in Denver for the summer because her husband was transferred there from his job in Hawaii, she entered the Rocky Mountain contest and placed second. “When there’s nothing else around, this will do fine,” she said.

Pool Has Advantages

And for beginners, the wave pool has even more advantages. They are not distracted by salt water in their faces when paddling out; no jellyfish or sewage outfalls mar the experience. The consistency of the waves allows a novice to practice the same moves over and over again under the same conditions. Surf coaches at Allentown and Palm Springs say their students learn to ride in a week or two--as opposed to an entire summer at the beach.

If pool waves don’t roar like the ocean’s best efforts, “these kids don’t know any different,” said Peter Townend, the 1976 pro surfing world champion. He has performed in exhibitions and taught youngsters to surf in Ohio and Tennessee. “To them,” Townend said, “it’s just as exciting.”

Joe Guzman certainly has no complaints. This summer, he visited his older brother, a student at Pepperdine University in Malibu, and didn’t once sample the waves at the world-famous beach across the street from the campus where surfing was popularized.

He did walk around on the sand for a few hours, casting an eye toward the water. But he was with his brother, who doesn’t surf, and he didn’t have a board to ride. Besides, “when I was there, the waves weren’t too good. It was flat,” he said. And he figured “I can surf at home.”

Former Ocean Surfer

So he returned to Allentown and rejoined the crew at Dorney Park. There was his neighbor, Mike Judge, a pale, red-haired 17-year-old who introduced him to the wave pool and to surfing.

And there was Danny Stigler, 16, a camp counselor who once surfed the ocean but has no time after work to drive all the way to the shore. And Tim Oliphant, 17, a blond Dorney Park lifeguard who surfs on his day off. And Dean DeMilio, 16, soon to relocate but undecided as to whether he’d rather have his father move the family to Malibu, for the sea, or to Scottsdale, Ariz., for the surf pool in nearby Tempe--the original, the one that opened in 1969, before manufacturers refined surf-pool design and the surf craze took off.

This is the second summer of surfing at Dorney Park, and the regulars have learned to gather a good hour before the sessions start.

If they don’t arrive early, the 14 “soft” boards made of foam--rather than the traditional fiberglass-- will be rented out to others. Sometimes the line is so long that they miss out anyway, and that means being reduced to spectator status. Only instructors are permitted to ride their own boards in the pool.

Costs of Sport

Most of the teen-agers grumble about spending their summer-job money on the $35 season pass to the park, the $4.75 per session board rental, the 50-cent locker fee, the $45 for surf lessons. Still, they part with the cash, and then shell out even more for wetsuits, full surfer regalia and subscriptions to the surfing magazines.

The older guys have different concerns. Nardy Santos, for example, a 27-year-old mental health counselor, has already been warned by his wife that he’ll have to spend fewer hours riding waves once he starts medical school in the fall.

Those drawbacks are forgotten, however, once the swimmers are cleared from the gentle, rolling waves in the pool and the machinery revs up the breakers for surfing.

Try to Stand on Their Heads

The lucky 14 cut loose on the chlorine, riding the crests, slipping down onto the wave face and back up again. They even try to stand on their heads on the boards, and occasionally they succeed.

Every 15 minutes, the machinery shuts down and the water calms. The surfers take advantage of the down-time to paddle back over the glassy surface to the starting point at the deep end. Sometimes they simply get out of the pool and walk, toting their boards.

The break lasts five minutes. Then the equipment’s rumblings warn the surfers to prepare for takeoff and the whole routine begins again.

The surfers’ antics attract knots of onlookers. “It looks easy; I want to try,” 14-year-old Maurice Benjamin said while watching a recent evening session. His parents had brought him and his 12-year-old brother to the park for the more conventional water slides and inner-tube rides.

Their mother, Barbara, was inclined to let the boys give it a shot, but the boards had long since been rented. Sighed their father, Jim: “They want us to buy a wave-maker for the pool in our backyard.”