Space-Themed Indoor Pool Area (Gone)
Hutchinson, Kansas
Fans of Stovall's Space Age Lodge should come to the Ramada Inn (formerly the Grand Prairie Hotel) and reserve an indoor room facing the pools, an area called the "Kansas Splashdown Indoor Water Park."
The Park was obviously built at the peak of excitement for the Cosmosphere, an attraction that is only a few blocks away.
Inside the front door is a photo-op where you can pose giving a salute on the moon in a hollowed out fiberglass space suit beneath a replica Apollo command module. A small "river" circulates around a tiny "moon base" where another saluting astronaut leads what appears to be a robot lunar rover. Two space-walking astronauts are suspended above one of the pools, separated by a pint-size Soyuz space station.
You can soak in the "moon crater" hot tub, or be doused by the "mercury rocket" every time it blasts off.
We appreciate the overall effect -- we just stumbled onto Kansas Splashdown Indoor Water Park while wandering through the hotel. But we wonder whether all the space junk makes Splashdown less inviting as a pool to adult guests (kids must love it). Even when it's just us, the pool man, and the astronaut dummies, Splashdown still seems a busy spaceport. And it might be diverting to cannonball the lunar rover, as long as you don't brain yourself on a fake moon rock.
July 2015: Hotel management informed us "The pool area is no longer open to the public. Parts of the water park have been removed and is now just a regular pool for our hotel guests."
