January 19, 2025  |  News

Newport Beach wave pool update – here’s what needs to happen

News

Newport Beach, California, is an affluent coastal city in Orange County known for its stunning beaches, upscale real estate, and vibrant surf culture. And now, it just might host a wave pool. The wave pool project Snug Harbor Surf Park (not to be confused with the New Orleans jazz club of the same name) will go up at 3100 Irvine

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January 18, 2025  |  News

Virginia Beach to see first waves this spring at Atlantic Park

News

The $350 million Atlantic Park project in Virginia Beach, yes THAT development backed by musician Pharrell Williams and anchored with a Wavegarden Cove, just issued a new fly-through clip.Hanbury Architects released a video showing plans for the project. The video tour is head-and-shoulders above much of the Y2K-era SIMS clips we see of upcoming developments. Animation gives a comprehensive feel

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January 17, 2025  |  News

EpicSurf awarded the Blooloop 2024 Innovation Award for Inclusion

News

EpicSurf has been awarded the Blooloop 2024 Innovation Award for Inclusion after their collaboration with Aqua Creek to develop the world’s first standing wave access lift. The company says the award underscores the growing global commitment to inclusivity in the surf industry. EpicSurf said this accolade celebrates not only their work in making surfing accessible but also the collective drive

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January 17, 2025  |  News

Unremarkable images of dirt-pushing signal remarkable day for KSWaveCo Austin fans

News

Drone images from the long-dormant much-speculated about KSWaveCo pool in Austin at the former site of the NLand surf park, show dirt being graded with heavy machinery. This is big news for wave pool enthusiasts looking for a lux experience and 45-second rides, as well as the rest of the surf world. The images taken by local news outlet The

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January 15, 2025  |  News, Podcasts

Explore this fascinating micro-culture of desert surf through a surf club lens

News, Podcasts

The Coachella Valley Surf Club emerged hot on the heels of a handful of wave pool announcements for the desert east of Los Angeles. What started as an organization to introduce desert kids to the wonders of surfing has evolved into a philanthropic exercise to provide scholarships to students at the Desert Mirage High School in Thermal. Dave Hilts runs

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January 14, 2025  |  News

Alaïa Bay partners with Surf Eye for its video capture system

News

Alaïa Bay’s wave pool in Sion, Switzerland has just added an AI Video system by Portuguese company Surf Eye. Starting from the upcoming 2025 season, every wave at Alaïa Bay will be automatically recorded, edited, and made available to customers. Surfers will be able to purchase high-resolution videos to relive, analyze, and share. Automated video systems automatically detect and record

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January 14, 2025  |  Features, News

Creating your own wave with Mikey February

Features, News

Last month Mikey February took his buttery surfing to Munich making, literally, new waves in the process. While he's quite public when refining surfboard shapes with sponsors, this was the first time he locked in with an engineer to create a wave. WavePoolMag spoke with Mikey and Endless Surf's Tanner Wilson in San Diego to learn more about the process.

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January 13, 2025  |  News

Japan’s legendary Ocean Dome wave pool facts and an interview with the surfer who got paid to perform there each night!

News

In wave pool lore, Ocean Dome is a mythic beast. It dished perfect, clear, hollow peaks that were leaps and bounds better than comparable artificial surf technology at the time. While other pools dribbled, Seagaia Ocean Dome peaked, slabbed and pitched. It was the artificial wave equivalent of Pipeline producing waves with genuine power. And judging by video clips from

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January 12, 2025  |  News

New Jersey mall wave pool helps those who help us

News

Non-profit organization Alpha Wave held an event at SkudinSurf in the American Dream Mall recently. The group is focused on reducing isolation and suicide among veterans and first responders by lifting the spirits of participants. Studies show that surfing acts as a healing agent for people with a variety of special needs. Everything from a simple boost in mental health

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January 10, 2025  |  News

Freya Morris helps us learn how surf park shops are different from their salted brethren

News

How is working in a wave pool surf shop different from beach surf shops? You sell more surf park branded merchandise, more surf wax and have a higher through put of customers. Freya Morris of The Wave in Bristol explains. For three years Freya Morris has been acting retail manager and buyer at the surf shop for The Wave in

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January 8, 2025  |  News

Andy Hadden on bringing the Lost Shore Surf Resort to life

News

Andy Hadden is pumped. We’re sitting on the edge of the wave pool that he spent over a decade bringing to life. Today, all those blueprints, civic meetings and artist renders have disappeared into the ether to be replaced by the real, three-dimensional entity that is Lost Shore Surf Resort. In this episode we pick Andy’s brain to uncover the

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January 8, 2025  |  News

5 years already? URBNSURF Melbourne fires the confetti cannon

News

Last autumn, The Wave Bristol hit the five-years-in-business mark. Now, it’s the southern hemisphere’s turn as URBNSURF Melbourne celebrates five years of welcoming customers through their turnstiles. The wave pool weathered construction delays, COVID and a host of other first-generation issues but persevered and continues to deliver surf to the city of Melbourne and surrounding areas. “To say it’s been

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January 7, 2025  |  News

Wave pool wins prestigious Dutch award for building a gathering place in the center of a major city

News

The Little Wave Pool That Could has been recognized by the Dutch media. The Marketing Award Rotterdam stated that they awarded RiF010 the prize due to the innovative and inclusive nature of the project. RiF010 is located at Steigersgracht in the center of Rotterdam, in what was once an unused canal. RiF010 offers free surf lessons and sessions to kids

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January 6, 2025  |  News

The intersection of adaptive surfing and wave pools

News

The accessibility of wave pools contributes to a growing community of para surfers worldwide. Since its beginnings, surfing has been touted as a sport of freedom and community. But for surfers with physical disabilities, the challenges are magnified, both good and bad. The simple act of sliding unencumbered along a wave brings more joy than many who are able-bodied can

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January 5, 2025  |  News

“Stay positive and take a couple of deep breaths,” Teddy Navarro of PSSC

News

When Southern California’s notorious traffic isnt kind, the two-hour drive from Teddy Navarro’s home in Huntington Beach to work at The Palm Springs Surf Club can take up to four hours. Like many people in the surf park operations space, he’s learned to be flexible to accommodate everything from weird commute times to the on-again-off-again schedule of 2024. But the

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January 3, 2025  |  News

First Person: The 1988 Wild Rivers surf comp foretold California’s wave pool infatuation, and yes, Kelly was there

News

The Palm Springs Surf Club is fully up and running daily and because I live so close, I have been making several trips to watch and photograph a few people I know and I have really enjoyed it.  This past week, I got a call from Sean Mattison and his lovely wife, Krissy. Krissy works at Surfride, one of the

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January 2, 2025  |  News

Locals: Jacques Le Roux of URBNSURF Melbourne

News

How difficult it must be to have a wave pool in your backyard and watch it open up only to shut down almost immediately due to COVID-19. For three excruciating years, Jacques Le Roux watched this surf park drama unfold in his backyard. At the time, WavePoolMag would get Instagram DMs from Mr. Le Roux, "What's going on?" and "When's

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January 1, 2025  |  News

Celebrated photographer returns to find wave pool in his hometown

News

Bristol native Adam Warmington runs an Emmy Award winning production company out of San Francisco, California. He vaguely remembers the area around The Wave in Easter Compton, having only ventured there as a kid to play the odd cricket match. In July he returned home to see family, reconnect with old friends and take his kids to the The Wave.

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December 31, 2024  |  News

Travel Log: WavePoolMag visits the surf parks that opened in 2024

News

In 2024 WavePoolMag visited half a dozen surf parks to get a feel for each facility’s uniqueness and character.  We know from past trips that waves, prices, management, surfing level and most importantly, X Factor/Vibe are all different at each location. Which is something we never really expected when we set out on documenting this space so many years ago.

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December 29, 2024  |  News

Like gold dust coming through your Insta feed

News

During a WavePoolMag trip to Surf Lakes, we were fortunate enough to meet Rambo Estrada. The photographer was on site to document the experience for assembled investors, contractors, and celebs. Rambo captured the entire three-day event from both land and water. Some images were used for promotional purposes by Surf Lakes, while most simply filled the Instagram accounts of the

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December 28, 2024  |  News

Wave Pool inventiveness is alive and well with latest circular concept

News

We’ve often heard the wave pool space referred to as a big kids’ science fair. And we embrace that aspect of it because it’s through these basement tapes that true innovation comes about. Even without millions of dollars of investment support, wave pool designs are still sprouting up across the globe. It's a good indication that the spirit of the

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December 26, 2024  |  News

Convo Time: How wave pools will shape everything from the WSL to the surf industry

News

Brendan Buckley, or just “Buck,” spent years in the marketing department at Quiksilver before moving to the editor’s desk at Stab. His perspective is unique because, whereas editorial and marketing are typically two separate entities, Buck is a professor of both. We spoke with him to gain surf endemic insight on those places where wave pools intersect with surf brands,

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December 24, 2024  |  News

Can the Wave Pool Industry Go Green? Yes. Here’s How

News

Owning and running an environmentally aware business that leaves as light of a footprint as possible is a tricky task for any business, doubly so with wave pools. Water and electricity usage and practices need to be constantly scrutinised and updated; for both economic reasons, and green principles. To streamline the path to good environmental governance, which can assist wave

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December 22, 2024  |  News

Waco Surf uses customer feedback to evolve, expand the facility

News

To stay in the game surf parks need to keep on top of consumer demands. Most industries have a decade or more of trial and error to fall back on. Not surf parks. So what to do? Sometimes it's as simple as asking your customers what they want. Recently, Waco Surf announced upgrades to their accommodations, including new hotel rooms

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December 21, 2024  |  News

Numbers Nerd: How many surfers per wave pool per country?

News

Figures are only as solid as their interpretation, and while numbers don't lie, they can be thrown into the shorebreak of estimates and come out any which way. But with the growth of surfing worldwide, the actual number of surfers is as pliable as a block of wax on a summer's day.  In 2012, the International Surfing Association (ISA) handed

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