Columbia Pictures Aquaverse, a partnership between Sony Pictures Entertainment and Thailand-based attractions developer Amazon Falls, officially opened last October.
Located in Bangsaray, close to Pattaya and Bangkok, the attraction is the world’s first Columbia Pictures ‘water theme park’. It features rides and experiences inspired by films including Ghostbusters, Jumanji, Bad Boys, Zombieland, The Emoji Movie, Surf’s Up and Hotel Transylvania.
Columbia Pictures Aquaverse includes themed zones, live shows, immersive entertainment, and dining and retail facilities. The Hotel Transylvania area is Southeast Asia’s largest water play structure, offering nine slides and more than 100 water features.
Attractions in the Ghostbusters zone are Proton Stream, featuring the world’s first Stay Puft-themed water dome, Slimer Speed Racer and Ghost Trap Adventure. Meanwhile, the Jumanji land rides are called Viper, Jaguar Mountain and Jungle Stampede. Attractions such as Zombie Chase, The Beast and Double Tap are in the Zombieland zone.
The park also offers a FlowRider from WhiteWater, a leading waterpark manufacturer.
Jeffrey Godsick, EVP of global partnerships and brand management and head of LBE at Sony Pictures, and Liakat Dhanji, CEO and chairman of Amazon Falls, speak to blooloop about the new water theme park.
Bringing much-loved IP to life
Dhanji says that the immersive attraction marks a phenomenal event for Thai tourism.
“We created a dreamlike destination that brings people’s favourite characters and movies to life and gives audiences the extraordinary journey they are unlikely to find elsewhere,” he added. “This is just a beginning of a long-term relationship with Sony Pictures Entertainment to bring immersive experiences throughout this destination project.”
Columbia Pictures Aquaverse started as a water park:
“The park is on 14 acres, but there is a lot more room,” says Godsick. “The owners felt if they were going to develop it into a true destination, they needed a broader appeal to a wider audience. That is why they wanted to create a movie theme park.”
Having started primarily as a water park, the addition of dry-based rides – beginning with the first non-water-based ride, Bad Boys Raceway – triggered its transition into a true theme park.
Godsick adds:
“The goal is to make the entirety as immersive as possible, so the decor and the rides need to be themed around IP, but so, too, are all the other experiences in the park. There are several live shows with music, dancers and singers all based on our IP. There is a lot of themed food, all based on IP. It’s a full immersion experience, as opposed to just the attractions.”
Columbia Pictures Aquaverse
Explaining the strategy behind Columbia Pictures Aquaverse and the partnership between Amazon Falls and Sony Pictures Entertainment, Dhanji tells blooloop:
“The demographics in 2005 were mostly families with younger children. That was the demographic that we had attracted with Cartoon Network, and very successfully. Ten years on, the demographics had shifted substantially.”
Interestingly, these changes reflect similar demographic changes in Southeast Asia:
“Those young children had become teenagers; the teenagers had become young parents, and the parents had now become grandparents. I needed an IP that would attract a much broader clientele. The changes that I could see happening in the country were on a large scale, particularly the Eastern Economic Corridor Initiative. This is one of the largest city planning initiatives, at least in Asia, possibly globally.”
“As we looked at what would change in the area in terms of airports, high-speed rail and connectivity, I knew that we needed to look on a much larger scale.”
At this point, he was introduced, through a mutual friend, to Godsick:
“I first met him in 2016. From that very first meeting, we just seemed to be so aligned in our respective visions. It was almost like it was meant to be.”
Dhanji had been exploring different alternatives and had gone quite deep into discussions with potential partners at this time. However:
“After that meeting, I came away saying, ‘I know this is right. I just feel it.’”
A global branded destination
Dhanji’s vision had always been to build a global branded destination:
“It wasn’t about focusing on a theme park, a hotel, on retail, or on any one idea. It was about building a global destination, which has so many facets to it,” he explains. “Now, it has morphed into becoming a destination more along the lines of a micro-city. That is the newest sustainability trend.”
“This partnership with Sony has grown stronger and stronger over the last few years because we are working together on so many different areas, each with an individual strength – and it fits into my vision.”
In terms of Godsick’s perspective, he comments:
“Jeffrey had the same vision because he was launching his location-based entertainment division. He wanted to do so in a way that went beyond just putting an IP ride into an existing entity. He wanted to be able to define location-based entertainment using Sony itself, and Columbia Pictures.”
Choosing the right IP for Columbia Pictures Aquaverse
In determining the right IP to go into the park, Godsick felt it was important to hit on several levels:
“First, we identified the broadest IP that everyone loves, from kids through teens through adults. You find that with brands like Ghostbusters and Jumanji. Those are big, big brands. Then we wanted family-oriented brands. So, we brought in a few of the animation brands, like Hotel Transylvania, which is really popular and doesn’t just appeal to kids. It’s a real family movie. Everybody loves it.”
“We brought in IP that’s a little younger like The Emoji Movie and Surf’s Up, both of which theme well to what we were creating inside the park, and some IP that’s a little older, like Bad Boys, where, again, in the name of immersion, they’ve designed not only a really cool racetrack but have essentially put it in South Beach Miami, where the movie is set, complete with a pool for that cool South Beach pool party feel, which is great.
“There are things that appeal to every age.”
In addition to the daily shows, the programming includes big shows on the giant stage in front of the Wave Pool and screenings in the pool.
“It’s pretty spectacular,” Godsick comments.
Meeting fans’ expectations
There are certain challenges inherent in using IP that is so well-loved that people feel a sense of ownership.
“There are levels of fanship,” he says. “Some people know every aspect of the movie and can quote every line in Ghostbusters. They can tell you about every gadget they use. As an example, we have a thousand Ghostbusters fan clubs, just in the United States. I’ve met a lot of these people. They make their own outfits and proton packs, which look identical to the real props. They just love the brand so much.
“There are all kinds of Easter eggs built in for the uber fan that the more casual fan might not pick up. But that’s what gives an experience its different levels. That’s why we chose the IP that we did.”
Commenting on the technology being utilised, Godsick says:
“There is tech that is both subtle and tech that is overt. I think one of the coolest things is this green sphere that has probably the largest ‘no ghosts’ logo in the world on the outside. When you reach the end of one of the slide tunnels you enter the green sphere and wash up and down the sides until you slow down sufficiently to go down the next tunnel. While you’re in the sphere, there are projections and sound.
“Lighting and sound effects have been added in other slides as you’re zooming through, too. It’s another level of immersion that could not happen without technology.”
Immersive theming at Columbia Pictures Aquaverse
The greatest challenges in working with popular IP, Dhanji contends, are the legal ones:
“This is something I encountered when working with Turner Broadcasting: there was no benchmark for it, so we were both treading brand-new ground with one of the biggest companies in the world. That process was excruciating, but it worked because there was such a good level of trust.
“Concerning Sony, if we distil the relationship down to its key essentials, trust is one of those essentials. Much of our relationship going forward is not based on legal documents but on trust. It works well.”
Addressing the park’s immersive theming, he says:
“When we talk about immersion, we are talking firstly about involving all the five senses. The second thing about immersion is that you want to transport people away from where they are today into somewhere where they’ve never been.
“We came up with a slogan right from the beginning: ‘Adventure Beyond the Screen.’ We wanted to take you from passively watching a movie to putting you into the movie itself.
“That is a complex process. It involves projection mapping, and repurposing of content for a particular environment – in a water park it’s even more challenging because it has to be in an enclosed structure. We were fortunate in that, from the beginning, we had several fully enclosed structures.”
Engaging Ghostbusters experiences
One is the giant sphere that Godsick referenced:
“It is huge: eight storeys high,” Dhanji says. “Four people go into a tube from eight storeys. They slide through it, and then get dropped into the top of this sphere.”
At this point, they are travelling at roughly 40 miles per hour:
“It’s quite scary. As soon as they enter, it triggers a projection system that projects the sea, the buildings, and then the ghost – the giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters – on the inside of the sphere. While you’re still in the sphere, the Ghostbusters come to save you, sucking up the Stay Puft ghost into their proton pack.”
Another ride is a combination of three shuttles and involves projection and sound:
“Here, it is Slimer the ghost who comes at you. You manage to escape by going through his body. In the second shuttle, you encounter the Terror Dog. There’s another ghost waiting in the third shuttle. The idea is to immerse you in the experience of the movie.
“Then we’ve got one big ride where, at the end, there is an LED screen, with water creating a fog, as if the mist were coming out of it. As you go into the fog, the projection comes at you. That rounds out the Ghostbusters area.
“Then you go through Zombieland, haunt of the horrific zombie clown,”
Zombieland, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and more
Zombieland boasts a four-person slide, featuring a 12m free-fall, a 360-degree spin, and Asia’s steepest body slide. Dhanji adds:
“At night, the water there gets transformed into blood.”
Meanwhile, in the Jumanji zone, guests flee the clutches of animatronic Mandrills before plunging into the splash pool.
“Then, we have themed the lazy river around Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. There are animatronics here, too; the Taco Monster comes at you and starts to try and eat you up. Then you have to run away from the hamburger as it’s trying to get you. There are 12 animatronics, positioned in spots throughout the jungle.”
Columbia Pictures Aquaverse is a key project for Thailand
In terms of demographics, Columbia Pictures Aquaverse is positioned to be a global destination and is a key piece in Thailand’s post-pandemic recovery strategy.
“We had a meeting with the governor of the Eastern economic corridor and a meeting with the governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand,” Dhanji says:
“For Thailand, 2023 to 2027 is a new chapter. Sony has put together an extensive plan detailing how they’re going to market this park globally – across 90 countries. The tourism authority of Thailand is going to work in conjunction together with them and us to leverage that with their own partners, with airlines, and so on.”
He adds:
“When this project started 20 years ago, it was something that I was doing in my retirement, as my gift to the country. That remains the same. The pandemic hurt so many businesses; so much employment was lost.
“I want to do my part in trying to bring that back by bringing in both domestic and foreign visitors to help all the industries because the multiplier effect in the theme park sector is very high. Hotels, transportation, restaurants: it helps everybody.”
Sony and LBE
Speaking about Sony’s projects in the location-based entertainment (LBE) space, Godsick comments:
“What we’re looking to do with the location-based entertainment business is extend and broaden the relationship we have between our audiences and our IP. We need activations that maintain that relationship, bring new audiences into the brand, and extend the stories.”
“In many cases, we’re world-building with these attractions. We’re not just repeating what you’ve seen before in one of the movies; we’re trying to add to it. In some cases, we might add new characters, we might add new locations, new story elements. We stick with the original canon that the IP is based on, and then add to it by creating new elements. I think that adds to the immersion and the ‘wow’ factor.”
This is, he explains, on a global scale:
“We’re fortunate enough to have IP that has global resonance. Because of that, there’s almost not a market that our big IP is not known in.”
More Sony Pictures Entertainment LBE experiences to come
Columbia Pictures Aquaverse is, Godsick confirms, part of a strategy focused on extending Sony Pictures Entertainment into various themed entertainment channels.
“We are in discussion on several locations that would be fully branded theme parks, but we have a multichannel strategy, so we’ll continue to do very select individual rides,” he comments.
These include Ghostbusters at Heide Park in Germany and seven attractions at Motiongate in Dubai.
In March 2022, Merlin and Sony Pictures announced an agreement to open new rides, lands and hotel rooms based on Jumanji, Sony Pictures’ $2 billion film franchise, at Merlin’s attractions across the world. The world’s first Jumanji-themed ride, Jumanji The Adventure, opened at Gardaland in spring 2022.
This was followed by the world’s first Jumanji-themed land, the £17 million World of Jumanji, which opened at Chessington World of Adventures in May 2023. This is home to the first Jumanji-themed coaster, Mandrill Mayhem, and the Mamba Strike and Ostrich Stampede rides.
All images kind courtesy of Columbia Pictures Aquaverse
