Wet ‘n’ Wild GM talks new rides, going undercover

At practically every career stop he’s made, Takuya Ohki has made a splash.

Ohki, a Tokyo native who moved to Hawaii at 18 to attend college, has spent virtually all of his work life inside recreational water parks. He relocated from Hawaii to Las Vegas in 2012 to open Wet ‘n’ Wild as the park’s general manager.

As Ohki prepares for the park’s upcoming season, which starts April 18, he’s busy plotting strategies to expand the park’s annual visitor volume, which runs at around 400,000 a year. On tap: New rides that will be the first of their kind anywhere in the world, and marketing campaigns designed to draw more tourists to the park, which gets about 90 percent of its traffic from locals.

Question: What prompted your relocation to Las Vegas?

Answer: The opening of Wet ’n’ Wild Las Vegas. Hawaii is definitely a paradise and a great place to be, but Las Vegas needed a water park, too. I wanted to be a part of bringing a water park to Las Vegas.

Question: How did you get into the theme-park industry?

Answer: While I was in school at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, I worked at the Polynesian Cultural Center, which was the No. 1 paid attraction on Oahu, with 600,000 to 800,000 visitors a year. I did customer-service work there. As I was graduating, another park, the Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park, opened. I got a customer-service job there and started on the opening staff. So I got to see a water park brought to Hawaii.

People were skeptical of a water park there, because Hawaii is surrounded by beautiful ocean. But locals loved it. It was a different experience to be able to go down a six-story slide. So the water park became the No. 1 family destination in Hawaii.

Question: Why have you stayed in the industry for nearly 20 years?

Answer: I’ve enjoyed seeing guests having a good time, and I’ve enjoyed meeting people. I also like to work in teams and inspire others, such as employees. Also, the theme park business is different every day. You can have a lot of different experiences. You’re not just sitting behind a desk, or working on spreadsheet. You meet people and have exciting experiences.

But the biggest reward is seeing kids smile, and seeing parents happy. I really enjoy seeing families spend time together, having a good time.

Question: Las Vegas has a lot of leisure opportunities. Why did we need a water park?

Answer: Las Vegas has cutting-edge entertainment. But when I got here with my five kids in the fall (of 2012), it was just so hot. We were driving around the Green Valley area during the day, and we came across Sunset Park. My kids were excited to see a park, so we stopped. They went out and came back in five minutes with these red faces. It was so hot. Later, we realized people go to the park first thing in the morning or in the evening. Las Vegas just really needed a family experience to let people cool down during the summer.

Question: How have you tried to be different from other water parks around the country?

Answer: We brought in the first Rattler (slide) in North America, and we brought in the Constrictor, a ride that was voted by the Travel Channel as one of the nation’s top water slides. (The two rides share a launch platform and some of the tightest and tallest banking turns on any water slide.)

But because this is Las Vegas, when we really focused on the guest experience, we thought of shade. If you’re not under shade here, it’s unbearable. We really made sure the queues where people stand in line have enough shaded coverage and mist to make people comfortable.

Question: What’s new this year?

Answer: We’re going to be the venue for the world’s first slideboarding attraction. It’s a slide that integrates (video)-gaming skill. It’s basically like “Guitar Hero,” the way you have to play it when you see those red or green notes. You’ll be in a slide on the raft. There’ll be buttons, and you have to push them according to the light that comes on while you’re on the path. There’ll be different levels, and the better your score, the more your level goes up. You’ll be able to check scores online. The concept has not been done anywhere else in the world. We’ll be the first to test it.

This is going to be a game-changer in the water-park industry. I think once we introduce this, you’ll see more lighting, sound and misting.

Question: Have you tried the rides?

Answer: When you ride the slides, you come up with new ideas or ways of serving guests. I go into the park with my kids about twice a month as a secret guest making sure everyone is providing excellent guest service. Some employees recognize me, but when you’re in a swimsuit, people aren’t expecting you.

Question: What’s your favorite ride?

Answer: The Rattler. I just like the thrill of it. You get to ride with three other people, facing each other as you go down the slide into an area where you get dumped in and oscillate back and forth, and go high up. I get to see my kids screaming and having fun. It’s a ride you can experience together.

Question: What are your future goals?

Answer: We’re very happy we were ranked the No. 1 family attraction in (the Review-Journal’s) Best of Las Vegas. I just want our park to keep being the solution for families during the summer. We want it to be the kind of place where you get a season pass and your summer entertainment is taken care of. We don’t want to provide just rides. We want to provide movies. We showed “Frozen” and it was a huge hit. We want to be the local entertainment solution for summer.

Contact Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com. Follow @J_Robison1 on Twitter.