Family attraction

Geoff and Melissa Kellogg’s kids won’t have to worry about finding the kind of summer job that makes friends envious – the type that involves a deep summer tan and a season full of laughter and fun.

Three years ago the couple bought SplashDown Family Waterpark, 11127 E. Mission Ave., which has rested between Valley Mission Park and Interstate 90 since it was built in 1982.

“We thought it was the perfect family business,” Melissa Kellogg said. “We have six kids, so it’s absolutely appropriate to bring your kids to work. They can play in the park and hang out here at SplashDown. It’s a fun place to be, and they can help do some of the things that need to be done around here.

“A water-slide park is a pretty sweet gig if you’re a 12-year-old.”

Sons Jordan, 17, Tyler, 15, Connor 13, twins Merrick and MacKenzie, 12, and youngest daughter Grace, 18 months, all enjoy the family business.

“They do get a little tired by the end of the summer,” she said. “By the end of the summer school isn’t looking so bad.”

The Kellogg kids are in good company. The park welcomes between 300 and 500 people per day during its season, which runs through Labor Day.

“There’s something about sunshine and water and splashing that bring out the kid in everybody,” Kellogg said. “We have people come into the park saying they’re only going to watch, but they always seem to end up going down the slides and having fun.”

It turns out that owning a water park is a pretty sweet gig if you’re an adult, too.

“What a great place to come to work,” Kellogg said. “The laughter is infectious. You’re around people who are having fun all day. That keeps you going.”

The Kelloggs spent their first season polling customers and looking for a way to expand the four 400-foot-long slides that make up the park’s main attractions, dubbed Spokane Falls, which received a facelift before the start of the 2006 season, and the popular kiddie area known as “Petey’s Little Puffer Fish Lagoon.”

“The kiddie area is really popular,” Kellogg said. “My 18-month old’s favorite part of the day is when her 12-year-old sister takes her out to play in the pool.

“It’s the kind of area where the kids can have fun and ride the slides, but the older kids actually find enjoyable for hanging out.”

But it’s the long, winding main attraction that has sustained the park for more than two decades.

“If you look around at the new parks, you don’t see slides that long,” Kellogg said. “They just don’t build them like that any more.”

But the couple weren’t satisfied.

“We just felt that it needed something more,” Kellogg said. “We wanted to add something new.”

The couple were determined to maintain the family-friendly environment while expanding the thrill quotient.

“That was one of the big factors that went into our decision to expand with the Cannon Bowl last year,” she said of the new slide that sends riders through a tube and shooting out into a pool.

“We wanted to make sure that we were fun for the whole family – not just the little ones and not just the kids. We wanted something that mom could take a little one on but that dad and the older kids would find fun, too. And I think we were right on the mark.

“Everyone comes up and says ‘Wow – I thought that would be fun but I had no idea it would be so much fun.’ “