$90M Water Park Planned for Opryland

NASHVILLE, TN — A $90 million, 218,000 square-foot water park is coming to Opryland by the end of 2018, the hotel's owner, Ryman Hospitality, announced Wednesday.

The water park — which will be called "Soundwaves" — will include a lazy river, wave pool, water slides, restaurants, bars and live entertainment, but unlike the gone-but-not-forgotten Opryland USA theme park, will be open only to hotel guests and not the general public.

At a press event, Ryman Hospitality CEO Colin Reed said the park is part of a push to draw more conventions and family travelers to Opryland as Nashville's tourism boom continues.

"We want to make the facility a 365-day a year experience," Reed said. "We want to have a lot more ammunition to go after family-oriented conventions."

The water park should also encourage non-convention visitors to extend their stays beyond a couple of days, potentially drawing the growing bachelor and bachelorette party market out of downtown and across the river to Pennington Bend.

"As we look at this changing consumer group that is piling into this town — the bachelorette parties, the bachelor parties, we've come to the conclusion that honky tonks are fabulous. That's why they come here to drink beer and listen to music, but there's a limit to how much you can do that. If you're here for four or five days, there's a limit to that. You can see great concerts and drink a lot of beer, but you've got to be able to do other things to fulfill and capture these people," he said.

The water park will be connected to the hotel proper and built on what is now the self-parking lot accessible from McGavock Pike. Reed says the project should increase full-time employment at Opryland by 699 people.

Ryman is working with Metro on an incentive package, which will include property-tax certainty for eight years and will extend the $1 million hotel tax rebate Opryland received following the 2010 flood by six years until 2031.

Image via Ryman Hospitality Group