After years of delays and tens of millions of dollars in cost overruns, the Oceania indoor water park opened its doors this year in Beloeil, Quebec, a notable feat in a business where getting an announced project to the finish line can be a challenge.
Oceania was slated to debut in 2021 at a projected cost of roughly midway between $30 million and $40 million, but overruns delayed the opening until earlier this year, leaving the final cost at almost $50 million. Oceania executives are counting on indoor attractions, including a straight-drop “FreeFall” slide that spins riders in darkness, a double FlowRider surf wave, plus a lazy river and kid-focused splash and toddler zones to lure 750,000 visitors yearly. That's about triple the attendance needed to break even in a capital-intensive, technically complex and failure-prone part of the hospitality industry.
“You don’t rush a project like this,” said Léopold Ste‑Marie, director of sales and marketing at Groupe Lobato, the developer and owner of the Oceania project, in an interview. “Before you even put a shovel in the ground, you’re dealing with zoning, approvals, engineers, elections and changes at city hall. That alone takes years."
As the unofficial start to summer gets underway in the coming week, indoor and outdoor water parks in the U.S. and Canada are seeing an increasing flow of development, with openings continuing to outnumber closures and project pipelines staying active as attendance returns to historical norms.
The two countries had a combined 1,266 water parks as of February, including 22 parks that opened in 2025, compared with four that exited the market, reflecting continued investor interest across both indoor and outdoor formats, according to an April report from Hotel & Leisure Advisors (H&LA). Last year, the total number of water parks in North America increased by 1.44% to 1,266, as 18 opened and four closed, according to the firm's report titled "Waterparks Continue to Innovate in 2026."
"For more than two decades, the waterpark segment has experienced annual growth as aquatic attractions have become firmly embedded in the vacation patterns of travelers," H&LA said in the report. "Numerous project openings across multiple formats in 2026 demonstrate the industry’s ongoing ability to innovate and respond to evolving market demand."
Oceania spans roughly 105,000 square feet, with about 85,000 square feet dedicated to water attractions. It does not include a hotel and is designed as a standalone indoor water park for day trips, not a destination resort.
Day-trip destinations
Unlike destination water park resorts with hotels that create a built-in customer base for repeat customers during their stays, Oceania was deliberately designed as a day‑trip attraction. “In an urban setting, families can come for a few hours and go home,” Ste‑Marie said. “That’s our approach.”
The facility has the advantage of being the only indoor park within a 2 1/2-hour drive, a distance many families consider too far for a day trip. Quebec's only other indoor water park is the Bora Park in Valcartier, north of Quebec City.
While a day of slides and splash pads may appear carefree, the economics behind indoor water parks are anything but. Financing, building and operating them profitably requires deep pockets, patience and a high tolerance for risk, a reality illustrated by how few such projects ever open.
“Most people don’t realize how many water park projects never make it past the announcement stage,” said David Sangree, president and founder of Hotel & Leisure Advisors, a consultancy specializing in hospitality and leisure developments. “It’s one of the most capital‑intensive and complex segments of hospitality."
Sangree said costs escalate rapidly once a project moves beyond a standalone attraction. Fully built indoor water park resorts that include hotels, conference space and year‑round entertainment routinely carry development budgets of $200 million to $300 million and often higher, depending on scale and location.
“That level of investment immediately narrows the pool of potential backers,” he said. The absence of a hotel at the Oceania project highlights one of the sector’s central economic divides.
“A standalone indoor water park is an attraction,” Sangree said. “A water park with a hotel is a destination. The economics are completely different.”
Successful water park resorts operate less like amusement parks and more like self‑contained vacation ecosystems designed to keep guests on site for multiple days.
“When families go to a place like Great Wolf Lodge, they’re not spending all day in the water,” Sangree said. “They check in, go to the water park for a few hours, go back to the room, rest, eat, maybe hit the arcade or family entertainment centre, and then go back again. It’s like a cruise ship on land. That’s why the hotel matters."
Without on‑site accommodations, parks rely heavily on local and regional day‑trip traffic. That model can work, Sangree said, but it limits per‑visitor spending and makes it harder to justify the kind of capital investment lenders typically prefer.
Big money projects
In Virginia, Kalahari Resorts & Conventions is building a roughly $900 million resort spanning 1.38 million square feet in Spotsylvania County. The nearly 135-acre development, located between U.S. Route 1 and Interstate 95, is its largest East Coast project to date.
Plans call for the development, now under construction and set to open this year, to include 907 guest rooms and suites, a 175,000‑square‑foot indoor water park, 10 acres of outdoor pools and a 90,000‑square‑foot indoor adventure park, according to Kalahari Resorts.
Founder Todd Nelson said Kalahari's fifth resort has been years in the making and credited state and local officials for helping advance the project.
Kalahari’s ability to finance projects of that scale is tied to its ownership structure. The company remains family-owned and funds expansion through the Nelson family rather than relying on outside equity, according to Bill Otto, an executive vice president involved in the Virginia project.
“We don’t rely on third‑party investors; our expansions are fueled by the equity of the owners,” Otto said in an email to CoStar News. He also said that long‑standing relationships with regional banks remain central as projects grow larger and more complex.
Experience plays an equally important role on the construction side, Otto said, given the technical demands of combining hotels, indoor water parks and convention space under one roof.
“We aren’t just building a hotel; we are building a massive structure containing America’s largest indoor water parks,” he said. He also noted that internal expertise helps manage the complexity and ensure projects perform “from day one.”
Site selection follows a process focused on demographics and long‑term demand. “We take a very disciplined, multi‑year approach to site selection,” Otto said, adding that the company looks beyond required third‑party studies when evaluating new markets.
Fitting into the community
Municipal alignment can be decisive. “We aren’t just looking for a piece of land,” Otto said. “We are looking for a community where we can build a long‑term partnership.”
In Oklahoma City, the Okana Resort & Indoor Waterpark opened in early 2025 as a $400 million development owned by the Chickasaw Nation. The resort, named after the words for water and friend in the Chickasaw language, opened on the Oklahoma River in February 2025. The 404-room resort is anchored by an 11‑story, 404‑suite hotel and a 100,000‑square‑foot indoor water park, with conference space, a family entertainment center and a 4.5‑acre outdoor adventure lagoon, according to Chickasaw Nation.
The nation projects an annual economic impact of about $98 million from the project, rising to more than $1 billion over a decade.
In Frankenmuth, Michigan, the Bavarian Inn Lodge completed an $80 million expansion that added Bavarian Blast, now marketed as the state’s largest indoor water park and family fun center. The attraction features 16 waterslides, a wave pool, a not‑so‑lazy river and Michigan’s first indoor swim‑up bar, according to lodge announcements.
In the U.S., outdoor water parks still account for most of the supply, particularly in the Midwest and South, regions that together are home to more than 600 outdoor parks. The number of indoor water parks is also expanding, especially in colder climates, with the U.S. Midwest alone accounting for 84 of the 154 indoor water park resorts operating across the United States and Canada, according to HL&A.
Canada shows a similar tilt toward indoor facilities, which represent more than half of its water park inventory. Together, the data show a wave of growth across park types rather than being driven by a single format.
The challenges of launching a viable indoor or outdoor water park are visible across Canada. In Cornwall, Ontario, plans for a Great Wolf Lodge resort first emerged in March 2022 and were promoted as a potentially transformative tourism development. Despite the company’s established operating model, including a successful Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls, construction on the Eastern Ontario project has not yet begun.
Publicly, the delays have been linked to the site's municipal utility work and transportation upgrades needed before construction can proceed. Cornwall officials have indicated the municipality is preparing the land for eventual development, including infrastructure elements such as new roads, water and sewer connections, stormwater systems, electrical capacity and other underground infrastructure required to support a large-scale resort.
Significant support systems needed
A modern indoor water park places unusually heavy demands on municipal systems due to its massive requirements for water circulation, heating, drainage and power, meaning substantial groundwork often has to be completed before vertical construction can begin.
“You’d think a Great Wolf project would be automatic,” Sangree said. “They have a proven model. But these things still take years, and not every market sits at the top of the expansion list.”
In Mirabel, Quebec, developer Ray Courtemanche, Jr. has spent years promoting plans for a massive indoor water park resort north of Montreal, billed as a four‑season destination with hotels, attractions and entertainment space. Despite repeated announcements and recent calls for investors and commercial partners, financing has yet to be finalized, and construction has not begun. Courtemanche did not reply to phone messages seeking details about the project.
“The challenge is always the same,” Sangree said. “Once your development budget gets that high, the pool of investors shrinks dramatically. The big‑money people are cautious.” This applies to both indoor and outdoor water parks, he said.
That caution has helped concentrate the sector around a small number of dominant operators. In North America, Great Wolf Lodge, with Canadian properties owned by the Jim Pattison Group, and Kalahari Resorts are widely regarded as the most successful water park resort chains.
Kalahari’s newest U.S. development, now underway in Virginia, carries a price tag well north of half a billion dollars. “That kind of funding only shows up when investors believe the operator knows exactly what they’re doing,” Sangree said. “Track record is everything.”
Even then, water parks face built‑in constraints, he said. Their core audience is families with young children, typically between the ages of 2 and 12 to 14, which limits appeal to other demographics. When multiple parks compete within driving distance, price sensitivity rises, and margins tighten.
“Families compare cost, features and experience very carefully,” Sangree said. “More choice is great for consumers, but not always great for owners."
Competition drives reinvestment
To remain competitive, operators must also constantly reinvest. “The goal is to have something new to talk about every few years,” Sangree said. “Sometimes it’s new slides. Sometimes it’s a new experience or show. If you don’t keep refreshing the product, you lose repeat visitation.”
That reinvestment cycle adds yet another layer of cost to an already expensive business — and helps explain why ribbon cuttings remain far rarer than the press releases announcing plans for new water parks.
“Every project comes down to one question,” Sangree said. “Does the value created by the resort exceed what it costs to build and operate it? If the answer isn’t clearly yes, the financing won’t be there.”
That was a difficult calculation for Oceania because once construction began, setbacks piled up. During the pandemic, custom metal components were stolen from the site for the metal value and had to be remade. The indoor environment, designed to operate year‑round, proved difficult to pull off, while specialized electrical systems pushed costs higher than anticipated, with some breakers costing $800 each.
The project was also forced to change engineering teams midstream. According to Ste‑Marie, new engineers declined to sign off on previous work, requiring plans to be redone to meet updated standards, effectively resetting portions of the project after construction was already underway.
He added that “our break‑even is about 223,000 visitors per year. That’s the number we work from.”
In its first week in February, Oceania averaged roughly 800 guests per day, and at that pace, the park would fall below its annual break‑even threshold if sustained. Still, management said, it is banking on attendance to ramp up as awareness grows and the traditional summer vacation season for families arrives.