Of course they're not off the shelf in terms of being cloned. They're off the shelf in terms of being standard offerings throughout the industry. You seem to know quite a bit about water parks (certainly more than me), so you're already aware of this being a pretty typical assortment of slides- many of which are down the street at Aquatica or were even at Wet n Wild (smaller or larger models, but the same model type and similar layout).
You'd consider this the best selection in the world? Not that I'm trying to dispute it, but that's your honest opinion? OCT seems to be pumping out contracts for selections as impressive as or bigger than what's at VB. And Holiday World is a wonderful little place- I still haven't brought myself to doing their (excellent looking) waterpark since they've got better things to ride that don't put me in the water with rural Indianian's (I kid, I kid... sort of).
I hope it's as good as you say it is. I have my doubts that there will be any speed at all to carry people up the second wall though. Hope I'm wrong. Now if they'd just theme the thing!
Oh certainly there are wonderful waterparks all over the earth and plenty closer than Asia or the Middle East. Those just seem to be massive hotbeds for the industry at the moment and personally I feel that they're at least equally as impressive as anything VB has to offer slide wise, guest service wise, innovation wise, and/or selection wise. That slide in Montreal looks fab, I wish Universal would have gone with more than one hydrmagnetic offering. Kind of stinks to see Holiday World outdoing Universal in that category. It would have massively helped throughput at VB too to have something like Mammoth there. I'm still baffled at how Universal justified having a single slide version with limited capacity compared to the full offering that other parks have made use of. I know it'll have the dark-ride-esque portions, but it's still off considering most other parks with single water-coasters aren't at the top of the industry like Universal was apparently gunning for.
Again, it'll be a fun park. I'll enjoy my visits, as will most people i'm sure. But to claim that this is some revolution in waterparks is silly. The only revolution I see is the inevitable disaster that'll come from trying to manage non-standby queues. I'm interested to see how they get that all up and running. Has any other ride, let alone park, ever been reservation only? I can only think of two examples, one being Everland and the other being for Veruckt before that deathtrap claimed its first (and thankfully only) victim. Glad they're tearing it down and I'm shocked that any insurer/inspector ever gave that company a green light to open that "water slide".
Back to Typhoon though- I'm a bit surprised at how tame this thing is given they've already got the world's tamest family raft ride.
Happy to see the effort in theming, though it's not top notch by any means.
