The Great Escape

Sounds like the “The Great Train Robbery”, eh ?

No, it is just the name of the Water Theme Park that my family visited yesterday. We took a day off to actualise the dream of getting to a water park in this summer time, and we made it finally ! Though we have been to Essel World before, it has been quite a long while.

After studying the options available, we chose The Great Escape, thinking that it sounded and looked cool from the website info’ provided. Visit “The Great Escape” and take a look for yourself !

From the location map on the site, I “intelligently” estimated that it would take around 1:30 hours to reach. But I underestimated the intelligence of two sets of folks - drivers in general, and direction-givers. The former community generally does not believe in taking advice from the car owners, or even studying the printout of the map provided. They think that they know Mumbai and its environs far better than the firangs who are inhabiting Mumbai. So, why take directions ? The latter set of “direction-givers” on the road, starting from security guards, to auto drivers, to general folks on the road who are minding their own business, take relish in displaying their “grand” knowledge of how to reach anywhere in Mumbai and its neighbourhood. They assume that anyway the drivers or the owners don’t know the way around, and so what is wrong in giving what could possibly be the right directions in their minds ?!

While I “discussed” the map with my driver for sure, he seemed to be disinterested. I mentioned some of the words from the map, like “Ghodbunder”, “Dahisar Checknaka”, et al. He beamed and said he knew the route ! We started off at 8:45 AM, and on the way happened to see the advertisement of “Suraj Water Park” in the newspaper supplement (“Suraj Water Park Thane” ). As were discussing, the driver overheard us and exclaimed that he knew that Park. We just ignored and continued our journey.

Well, we should have considered his assertion more vigourously. On the Western Expressway leading to Ahmedabad, my driver turned off at the Thane - Ghodbunder Road, towards Thane. I should have challenged him, but reaction times, so to say, were poor. We had some scenic travel along this road, which curves around hilly areas, and then finally landed up at Suraj Water Park in Thane ! Was it a surprise ?

However, as astute consumers and decision makers of repute, we instructed the driver to continue the journey towards Parol, via the Parol - Bhiwandi Road, again very intelligently “looking” at the map printout from the The Great Escape website. That was a blunder which would eventually cost us another 1:15 hours of stupid travel and quite a bit of heart-burn !

It was very obvious that the driver did not know the route. He must have checked with 6 different “direction-givers” enroute, after that point - mostly vague directions hinting at the possible right way to Parol. From Thane, we must have travelled over 40 Kms through rough terrain, villages, no-man’s land, and all kinds of roads, we almost lost hope of finding The Great Escape. It was 11:20 AM, by the time we saw an innocuous sign board not facing us - my wife asked the driver to slow down, we turned our faces and there, at last, was what we came for. We came along the wrong route, and that’s why I surmise that even the sign boards were pointing in the wrong direction of the travellers ! Amazing, isn’t it ? This place is located in what appeared to be the rural interiors of the Maharashtra State - very dry, hot location in poor surroundings with brick kilns lining the road.

However, finally we arrived, and the water park did exist !

This park does not compare favourably with Essel Water Kingdom. We noticed some safety issues in the water slides. This park also does not have a lot to spend time on - apart from the wave pool, some water slides, and pools where one can laze around. It does not have a “lazy pool” for instance, or some of the more complex slides. The entry rates included the food charges, and most people seemed to be attracted to the food - which was decent.

Clearly, there is a safety issue at The Great Escape, when the illiterate folks in charge of operating the slide, send down people without ensuring that the previous person had exited the slide. This is very dangerous, and I made it a point to seek out and complain to the Admin Manager and the Operations Manager - they took the feedback seriously and called the guys doing such mistakes down, and apologized to me ! I thought it should be the responsibility of the customers to inform the administration of such major safety problems - they might just be thinking that everything is fine till such time that a major incident happened.

Well, nothing to write further - we spent around 3.5 hours and left the park. The attendant at the exit gate was surprised to see us leaving at 3 PM, much earlier than the closing time of 6 PM.

I was pleased to discover that we took exactly 1:30 hours to reach back home, in line with my original estimate ! It goes without saying that we took the WE Highway back ! So, basic intelligence does sometime appear to work !!!

Cheers,

Vijay Srinivasan
19th April 2008
Mumbai