Water park in McMinnville, Oregon

Lots of you have seen or been to indoor water parks, right?  A great place to take the kids on a hot day.  Well how many water parks have you been to with a real 747 parked on the roof?

This is Evergreen Waves & Wings, an aviation-themed water park about a half hour south of Portland, Oregon.  This was an actual, functional 747-132 aircraft used by Delta Airlines, China Airlines, and Pan Am before being used for most of it’s service life by Evergreen International.  It now sits on top of their water park at the Evergreen Museum complex across from the McMinnville airport.  The bottom photo shows the beginning of the four water slides (two on each side) which begin inside the aircraft!  Patrons take stairs up from inside the park to enter the airplane, then slide down through the white tubes, landing in the pool inside the building.  What an incredibly clever idea.

The most recent aircraft designation is N481EV if you want to look up the flight history of the plane.

A HUGE thank you to my friend Shawn, a frequent commenter on the blog, who told me about this place.  It wasn’t on my radar, although I did later see that it was listed in the AAA Travel Guide for Oregon.  I had skipped right past that entry when doing my research because I am not normally interested in water parks, so I would have missed this if Shawn hadn’t told me.

I want everyone seeing this to say out loud: “Thank you, Shawn”