Sprayparks: the theme dream: theming your aquatic playground involves tough choices that pit beauty against your budget.

Temperatures in Troy, Ala., can get close to 100 degrees in the summer, making life pretty unbearable for kids out of school. That was one of the reasons Dan Smith, the parks and recreation director in the town of 14,000 residents decided to install a water playground.

"We believe this new splash pad will be a tremendous hit because children and water go together so well," he says. "Put a sprinkler in the front yard and your child has fun for hours."

Approximately $100,000 has been budgeted for Troy's aquatic playground, which will complement a new $5.5-million recreation center and eight-lane outdoor pool.

When it came time for construction, however, Smith had to make tough decisions, including whether his department should theme the splash pad. He explored a number of different themes, but ultimately decided to go the non-theme route because he felt he could get more bang for his buck.

Having a limited budget, Smith instead focused on unique individual stations. "Themes today can excite the imagination, so themes can be very creative," he says. "But the themes that I saw did not have the individual components that first caught my eye."

All around the country; park and recreation departments are struggling with this same issue: To theme or not to theme? It's a battle between budgets and beauty and function versus fun.

According to a focus group study commissioned by Rain Drop Products, an Ohio company that specializes in splash pads and water playgrounds, children are interested in functionality, not aesthetics.

Company president iron George says the study discovered that adults cared more about themes than kids.

"Children don't care necessarily how it looked," he says. "In some cases, they were overwhelmed, when all they wanted was to get wet and have fun."

The city of Hialeah in Florida operates three large aquatic centers and each one has its own water playground. Its park and recreation department chose not to use themes, but for different reasons than what the focus group study revealed.

Cost was a huge consideration for the south Florida city when it came to planning. Jason Horsley, the city's recreation and community services supervisor, feels themes are not cost-effective and can be limiting. For instance, if the city wanted to revamp one of its aquatic playgrounds in the future, it would be more difficult if a particular theme dictated what could be done.

"Not using themes allows you to be more progressive over time," says Horsley. "If I wanted to change something, I wouldn't have to worry about interfering with the theme. Personally, we haven't put ourselves in that situation."

Hialeah's first aquatic center opened in October 1996, while the most recent one opened in May 2001. The play structures alone at two of the facilities cost $150,000.

"A theme per se is not the draw; it's the variety of recreational opportunities that are provided within the facility," says Horsley. "As long as it provides a variety of things for kids to do, the theme's effect will wear off over time. The kids are not overwhelmed by theme as much as their parents; they want to play with the water cannons, those kinds of things."

On the flip side, Hamilton County Park District in Cincinnati, Ohio, has created themes for all three of its spray parks. Each one has a unique design featuring Parky, the park district's mascot, as the center of attention.

Parky's Ark features 18 animals that spray and squirt water onto the play area, with Parky standing as the commander of the ark. In Parky's Pirate Core, kids play with alligators, a giant octopus, and Parky as captain of a pirate ship. Parky's Wetland Adventure features a 16-foot tree with two water slides, and frogs, turtles and flowers that spray water. Parky stands on a tree stump, wearing a mask and flippers with water coming out of his snorkel.

"He's our mascot and he's the Center of the theme," says Bob Kline, the park district's development director. "The theme could be done without him but he plays a part. Each one has a central feature that was fairly costly in each case, but sets it apart from the others.

"We have chosen to use themes that carry through the entire area. Whether our wet playgrounds would be as attractive if they didn't have themes, I'm not sure. But being a park district, we like to give a little bit extra and make things more fun and colorful--not have a pad out there that just sprays water."

The park district feels the themes also work well from a marketing standpoint and maintains some consistency from facility to facility, but it does crone with a price. For example, the custom-made foam tree trunk in Parky's Wetland Adventure cost $150,000. It is 12 feet in diameter, big enough to handle two water slides.

A neighboring community has a water park featuring a pirate ship, but Hamilton County wanted something better.

"Ours is wrecked and split in two and there's a slide in-between. We took something they had already done and then we customized it for our application," Kline explains.

The pirate ship was a hit, so the park district came up with the idea to build an ark for the other water park. The two boat features cost $250,000, with the entire wet playgrounds coming in at around $1 million.

Hamilton County could have easily gone with less elaborate designs, but it wanted to make an impression on its users. Kline admits that kids are probably more interested in the wet playground's features than on its theme, but he says parents are the ones who have to sit there and watch their kids. He wants motivate them to bring users to the facility--an aesthetically pleasing place could provide that extra motivation.

"I'm pretty sure that we could've put some sprays out on a concrete pad and got people to come out, but we like to do things that are extra special for park visitors," he says. "Instead of coming and say they got wet, they get to have an entire experience. The whole complex has a mini-theme park feel to it."

Aquatic playgrounds--which are also referred to as splash pads, spray parks, wet playgrounds and water parks--have become very popular. They generally have no standing water, require no lifeguard supervision, allow children to move from play feature to play feature, have longer operating seasons than pools, and can be automated or activated manually.

Some park and recreation departments choose to build a water park instead of repairing an out-dated swimming pool, said Scott Broady, director of marketing for Vortex Aquatic Structures International.

"In their research, they're finding these splash pads are not only cheaper initially, but also in the long run," he says. "The cost of ownership is considerably lower and the play value is significantly greater than swimming pools. In this videogame generation that we live in, we need to find better ways to keep kids entertained. The big challenge is how to draw their attention with innovative play products."

Creativity has no limits when it comes to choosing a theme for a new aquatic playground. Many manufacturers offer pre-designed themes. Some traditional ones involve a western, nature or nautical motif, while others feature a firehouse or a pirate ship.

But park and recreation departments can also request something unique, and most manufacturers call work with you to come up with all original design based on your needs. Some have the ability to put together conceptual drawings and renderings to give you a better idea of what the final product will look like.

For example, Vortex offers all the traditional themes hut can also build custom ones, such as a NASCAR theme for a client in the southern United States. And some of its designs can also be converted into a piece of sculpture through the use of lights after the sun goes down.

"When the kids are there during the day, it's fun, and at night for adults it's an architectural design element," says Broady.

Choosing a pre-designed theme or going with your own choice of features when planning a new aquatic playground comes down to preference and what suits your customers.

The average cost for an aquatic playground is around $50,000 to $75,000. The sky is the limit based on what you want, though the price tag includes more than just the features. Other costs to consider include desk surfacing, water pumps and filters, reservoirs, landscaping, benches, piping, restrooms, and construction.

Depending on the magnitude of the theme, the cost of a project could cost up to 50 percent more, says Rain Drop's George, who adds that the trend he sees is fewer municipalities going with themed water parks.

"I don't think themes are going to go away, but this concept of aquatic playgrounds is growing so dramatically, you're going to see many more of these spraygrounds and splash pads built, and that the non-themed ones will out-number the themed ones."

But Broady disagrees with the notion that incorporating a theme into a splash pad leads to exorbitant costs. He says many factors dictate how much a project will cost, including which features you want, the size of the splash pad, the theme extending to the surfacing, etc.

"I don't think you can draw lines between costs and themes. It's completely dependent on the features you're choosing," he says. "You could pick a bunch of features individually and it could cost more than choosing a theme."

As for the belief that a theme will tie your hands down the road if you ever wanted to change your aquatic playground, Broady says while it makes sense, it is not likely that a parks and recreation department would spend the money to renovate.

"I've talked to a lot of people and they want the least amount of hassles possible," he says. "It's great in theory to say you want to switch and swap features, but the reality is that it doesn't happen."

He said a better scenario is for the city to use the funds to build another aquatic playground in another part of the community.

"The key is to have the right mix of products," says Broady. "As long as you have that and they're age appropriate, you're going to have a successful project that attracts a lot of people."

Dixon Tam works in public relations, and spent more than a decade in the newspaper industry as a reporter and editor.