Do you have any strange memories from your past that you aren’t quite sure are real? Perhaps you can’t remember all of the details but you feel like it happened and you’re struggling to recall details of the experience.
For me there’s the Nine Inch Nails concert at Visage in Orlando, the time we saw a rocket take off from the window of our airplane as we flew over Cape Canaveral, and the Warrant concert video I was in that was filmed Water Mania.
The year was 1989 and I was 14 years old. Warrant had released their debut album “Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich” early that year. It was the era of big hair bands and they were riding that wave with hits like “Heaven” and “Sometimes she Cries.” When their tour brought them to the Orlando area, my friend suggested we get tickets.
The concert was to be held at Water Mania, a third-tier water park in Central Florida after Wet n’ Wild and Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon. In an attempt to compete, the owners of the park began hosting concerts in 1988 but that, according to Setlist.fm, only lasted a year and a half. I can only imagine the liability that came with hosting a concert in the deep end of a wave pool for thousands of drunk fans in the dark.
I can only imagine the liability that came with hosting a concert in the deep end of a wave pool for thousands of drunk fans in the dark.
My friend’s mom dropped us off at the event. There were no adults with us inside the park. Now, as a mother of two teenagers, this fact alone blows my mind. We lived more than an hour from the venue. We were two 9th grade girls, without a cell phone, attending an evening rock concert in the deep end of a packed wave pool alongside drunk rowdy adults.
This certainly highlights the differences in parenting among the generations. In 1801, Alexander Hamilton sent his son off to a duel. As a Gen-Xer, raising the parenting bar quite a bit, my parents allowed me to go to this concert unchaperoned. I can’t imagine many Millennials were ever allowed to take such a risk and I can say with certainty that my Generation Alpha kids would not have my permission to do so.
We were two 9th grade girls, without a cell phone, attending an evening rock concert in the deep end of a packed wave pool alongside drunk rowdy adults.
Thankfully the owners of the park wrote a blog documenting a few photos from these events. This image was taken at the Ted Nugent concert, which had occurred a year earlier. The stage was situated at the deep end of the wave pool just as it was at the Warrant show.
At our concert, we were right up front, just a few spots away from the stage. The 40-something mom in me wonders what would happen if someone fell off their innertube. In the dark, with so many tubes around them, would anybody be able to see them to save them? If they were conscious, would they even be able to surface for air between all those tubes?
The kicker is the park was running the waves throughout the event.
The kicker is the park was running the waves throughout the event. So not only was the crowd jockeying for proximity to the stage, among each other in the pool. We were also fighting the waves. If you’ve ever been in the deep end of a wave pool when the waves are on, you can imagine the difficulty of simultaneously sticking together with your friends in a crowd, working your way as close to the stage as possible, dodging drunks and jerks, all while riding waves.
To my memory, the pool was even more packed at our concert. There’s video evidence to validate this memory because Warrant recorded a music video at our show. There are two music videos for their song, “Sometimes She Cries.” One is scripted and the other is the LIVE concert at Water Mania. At the start of the video you can see a few young kids floating at the front of the shot before the concert began.
This shot gives you an idea for how dark it was during the concert.
Another blog from one of the park owners indicates that they employed “scuba divers underwater in the pool to make sure nobody disappeared underneath the carpet of inner tubes.” It brings me comfort to think there might have been professional divers monitoring the crowd from underneath the waves, though I don’t remember ever seeing them.
More clips from the video validate my memory that the crowd was splashing the performers throughout the concert.
Late in the concert they played their biggest hit at the time “Heaven.” A scene from the music video depicted the band in their hotel, presumably on the road, wearing towels. It was a behind the scenes shot that became well known among fans.
The band came out on stage in towels to sing the song. At some point they took the towels off their heads and threw them into the crowd. I have a vivid recollection of catching one of the towels, promptly followed by a frenzied attack from my fellow concertgoers to take the towel from me. Whoever ripped the towel from my 14-year-old hands disappeared into the darkness so fast I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman.
Whoever ripped the towel from my 14-year-old hands disappeared into the darkness so fast I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman.
Overall, I remember the event as a fun, surreal experience. I am not aware of any major injuries among those of us in the pool, however I wouldn’t be surprised if water rescues were required that night.
Water Mania is closed now. The park was open from 1986 through 2005 and is no longer recognizable as it has been replaced with new construction.
If you have memories from this or other concerts at Water Mania, please share them here. I see you.
In my parent's defense, there's no way they could have known it was going to be as nuts as it ended up being. "A concert at a water park" sounds harmless enough on the surface. 😅