Alex Casey spends a morning testing the many hydroslides at Parakiore, New Zealand’s new largest recreation and aquatic centre. 

Yesterday the ribbon was cut (awkwardly into about six parts) on Parakiore, the biggest indoor recreation and aquatic centre not only in Aotearoa, but the whole entire Southern Hemisphere. At 32,000 square metres, just a sniff smaller than Ikea, the centre has a 50-metre competition pool, a dive pool, five hydroslides, a recreational pool and spa, a sensory aqua centre, nine indoor courts (with three that can house 2500 spectators), three movement studios, a giant gym, and a neat place to lie down on the way to the toilet. 

One of the cornerstone projects of the post-quake rebuild, Parakiore has been a long time coming. First announced in the Christchurch Central Recovery Plan with an aim for completion  by 2016, construction was delayed until 2018 and soon plagued by problems. There were the restrictions and supply issues during the pandemic. There was a legal battle with the contracting firm. There was the fact that it sunk into the ground by nearly a metre. There was the financial blowout which has seen it come in at a total of $500 million, nearly double the initial budget. 

From my glamorous media pen smack bang in the middle of the Parakiore show courts, soon to be home to the Tactix and the Rams, I watched as glitzy celebrities like Gerry Brownlee and Matt Doocey worked the room. Two-time Olympic swimmer Anna Simsic was there, as was aerobics titan Rob Bone. MC champion of the world Stacey Morrison generously led the crowd through the meaning and pronunciation of Pah-rah-kee-aw-reh, although her valiant efforts were not enough to stop an unnamed mayor giving it the old “Parakeyoree” mere moments later. 

I caught up with Phil Mauger after proceedings, where he confirmed a vicious rumour that he had already had a private hoon on all the Parakiore hydroslides. His favourite? The trap door slide that drops you vertically into the darkness. “Once they shut the door you go ‘is this a clever thing to be doing?’” he said. “But when there’s a 12-year-old kid who’s just done it in front of you, you think ‘I’m not going to cark out now’.” He also survived jumping off the five-metre diving board. “The good thing about it is, if something had gone wrong, the hospital’s right across the road.”

On that note, it was time for the most fearless news outlets, aka The Spinoff and The Press, to test out the hydroslides for themselves. Had I anticipated the awkwardness of swanning about in togs in a room full of fully-clothed professionals? Of course not. The Press’s Elsie Williams was savvier than I, opting for leggings and a singlet. When I am dead, please remember this: I was the only journalist in the country brave enough to get their flat pancake ass out the day the biggest indoor aquatic centre in the Southern Hemisphere opened. 

Here are my rankings of the hydroslides at Parakiore.

6. Kiddie slides

I’m not a damn baby, I’m a serious adult who ate three free cupcakes before 10am, has two more in her bag, and wants a thrill goddamnit (we were not allowed to test the kiddie slides). 

5. Medium speed hydroslide

Here you throw yourself into a black gaping maw that eventually gives way to buzzy black and white stripes, as if one is careening at moderate speed through a zebra’s colon. I counted four pretty dramatic twists, including one very long, slightly dizzying curve. Did I love every second? Yes. Are there more memorable thrills and spills to come? You bet your pancake ass there are.

4. Slow speed hydroslide

Perhaps controversial to rank slow higher than medium, but this was the first hydroslide I tested and I let an involuntary “woohoo” almost immediately. Testing it again later in the experiment, I realised that I enjoyed the languid, contemplative pace of this one. Lie down and ponder the importance of childlike joy in your everyday life, only for the shock splash landing to leave you bedraggled and gasping. A perfect metaphor for the human experience.  

3. Tube slide

This one would be higher if not for the indignity I suffered in the bowels of the tube slide, where you ride an inflatable ring into a turbulent, pitch black whirlpool and just have to hope you get spat out somewhere near the Pacific Ocean. I went down solo and was promptly turned around in the darkness, ejected backwards down the rest of the slide. As a result, I not only emerged in a humiliating breach position, but got stuck at the very end of the slide and was about five seconds away from the lifeguards needing to fetch a very large pair of forceps. 

(Later, in a high-powered newsroom merger that not even the Media Insider himself could see coming, The Spinoff and The Press tackled the slide together in a duo tube and the experience proved to be much better shared. Probably a metaphor in that too.)  

2. Fast speed hydroslide

Begins with a phenomenally steep drop, not unlike the end of the log flume at Rainbow’s End, which really sets a powerful pace for the rest of the slide. In fact, this is the first time I was going too fast to even muster my signature “woohoo” on the journey, left to just sort of hum and smile with my eyes crossed as the zebra stripes whizzed by. The fast slide also features sections which are a calming translucent light blue, right on time for the new Avatar movie (Parakiore opens December 17, Avatar opens December 18. Coincidence?)

1. Trapdoor slide

Just call me the mayor of Christchurch, because this slide is MAJOR. You get a tease of it on the walk up the stairs as its near-vertical tube whizzes through a hole in the ceiling, which will make for hilarious viewing as kid after kid hurtles past at lightning speed in a reverse Augustus Gloop scenario. The entry to the slide itself finally answers the question: how did Mike Myers feel to step inside Austin Powers’ cryogenic mojo chamber? 

Once you step inside the giant lava lamp, the door is sealed shut and a foreboding robot voice counts you down from five. At “one” the trap door floor opens and you drop into the darkness, making a strained noise usually reserved for ancient mummies. Fall into the void, let gravity take you away, and emerge reborn at the other end, gurgling at everyone to look away because you have sustained the world’s worst wedgie. Perfection.