In the heat of the summer when the Tennessee temps are at their peak, there are few better places to be than submerged in water, floating in a wave pool or drifting down a lazy river. And now, thanks to SoundWaves, a brand-new water attraction housed in the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, visitors to Nashville can do just that — and not only during summer months, but year-round.
The sprawling, $90 million, four-acre SoundWaves may seem to have materialized at a rapid pace, however, it’s long been in the process, and worth the wait: TIME magazine even named SoundWaves one of its World’s Greatest Places for 2019.
As the project came to fruition, Ryman Hospitality enlisted the expertise of Atlanta-based design firm BLUR Workshop in the fall of 2014, and the team soon began the design and documentation process, which took a solid 15 months to complete. The most important question to tackle right out of the gate was how to separate the resort from the attraction.
“One big ongoing discussion we had was making sure that [SoundWaves] was added as a benefit to the overall guests with a real concern on how different customers are between the corporate and the leisure business,” Scott Sickeler, co-owner and founder of BLUR Workshop, says of the initial planning stages. “Ultimately, we settled on a zoning of the overall [resort] campus so that the northern end was more of a leisure part and that the corporate side was on the east and the south with atriums in between.”
Two distinct problems BLUR identified among other water parks during the competition research was that they all felt like they were built with limited amount of natural light and were “kind of hard and short on landscape,” according to Sickeler.
Given that one of the resort’s signatures is its botanical garden environment, BLUR Workshop wanted to incorporate that element throughout SoundWaves.
“Those two concepts needed to make it into the design,” Sickeler says. “No matter what shape or form the building took, it needed to feel lush and that it was of comparable caliber and quality to the rest of the hotel.”
To achieve this, BLUR conceptualized living walls that are 3-feet thick and 60-feet tall and house 4,000 individually potted plants as a way to conceal the parts of the attraction that detract from the experience. “They completely mask the stairs that go up to the slides, so it’s a much more mysterious experience,” says Liz Neiswander, founding member of BLUR Workshop. Putting the water park on multiple levels added even more drama in the spatial experience.
Once the site was defined, BLUR also had to figure out how to create an all-season environment that could be used year-round, for which they teamed up with Jim Dunn with Aquatic Development Group, designers and builders of water parks.
The outdoor space is available for guest use daily from Memorial Day through Labor Day, then weekends through the end of September.
The indoor water attraction, however, is always open thanks to a climate-controlled system that keeps the temperature at 84 degrees and an ETFE roofing system that allows rays in year-round, meaning visitors can get a tan even in the coldest of months. The water itself stays within a five-degree range of 89 degrees.
Creating a cohesive space that was both appealing to children but attractive to adults was also at the forefront of the team’s minds while working on this project, as was “an emphasis on people in between those ages,” according to Neiswander.
“We wanted it to be a fun place for people in their 20s to go hang out, too,” Neiswander explains, “so we used a much more natural, sophisticated palette that’s white and wood and landscape and water and didn’t do a lot of heavy theming. The rides and the environment are the really cool experience.”
Using a natural segregation of the areas by creating multiple levels was one way BLUR created division among ages.
An adults-only area dubbed Status Cymbal is open to guests ages 18 and up, overlooks the main atrium and is outfitted with its own pool, bar and patio, but it’s also positioned so that the adults “can have an oversight on what their kids are up to — and not feel disconnected,” Sickeler says. “It gives them that sense that they’re there and they’re participating but that they’re not in the thick of it if they don’t want to be.”
The attraction itself comprises 11 slides — five indoor, six outdoor — and 23 cabanas for rent. In keeping with Nashville’s musical mantra, all the zones of SoundWaves follow suit. As visitors arrive at SoundWaves, the music through the entryway begins with country, then changes to match the vibe of the activity (Caribbean-inspired music in the lazy river, pop or ’80s music videos on screen at the outdoor wave pool, etc.).
There’s the 36-foot Up Tempo Rapids River, or for those who like a slower experience, the Down Tempo Lazy River. The Crowd Surfer is Tennessee’s only double FlowRider that allows two people to surf at once. In the Groovin’ Lagoon Activity Pool, there are lily pads to hop and a rock wall to climb, while the Quarter Note Cove is designed for smaller kids.
The largest of the restaurants, Decibels, seats 230 people, while the pair of food trucks are a more grab-and-go option and are named accordingly: Rhythm and Rhyme. The bottom level that houses the arcade, 4-D dark ride and the trio of private party rooms is dubbed The Bass-ment. And there’s often live music outdoors on weekends, too.
The only way to guarantee admission to SoundWaves is to either book an overnight stay package or reserve a private party room for a minimum of six guests and a maximum of 30. If there’s space available, however, guests who have not booked a package will be offered the option to add it at check-in. As always, check for travel restrictions or closures before planning your trip.
SoundWaves guests have their own dedicated check-in in the Magnolia Atrium that allows them to completely bypass the main lobby. Nearly a year since it first opened, SoundWaves is running like a well-oiled machine, and the BLUR team left the door wide open for potential expansion in the future.
“Hidden with the design is that it is expandable,” Sickeler says. “How we organized the rides, the mechanical systems, the pumps — everything is organized around the ability to seamlessly extend it toward the west.”
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