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Japan’s Hot Tub Rollercoaster Takes Water Parks to a New Level

A city in Japan is teasing plans of the world’s first spa-themed amusement park.

In a concept video, Beppu City on Japan’s Kyushu island showed off an idea for a new “spamusement park.” The video featured visitors at typical amusement park attractions—a carousel, ferris wheel and roller coaster—but instead of seats for each ride, there were hot tubs.

In the video, visitors entered the rides wearing only a towel—which begs the question: Are visitors to the potential site supposed to walk around in wet towels all day? Also: How does the water stay inside the ride and off electrical equipment? And how are we keeping all these rides clean?

Despite many logistical questions, the spamusement park could become reality.

The mayor of Beppu declared that once the video reached 1 million views (a somewhat low bar in 2016 for a video of people in towels riding roller coasters), the city would begin working on the onsen (hot spring) amusement park. The video has been viewed more than 2 million times since it was uploaded last week and the mayor announced in a statement that work has begun. However, it’s entirely possible that the rides shown in the video will not actually happen.

“We are still discussing safety issues, for example, whether we could actually run hot water inside a roller coaster,” a spokesperson for Beppu’s tourist department told The Japan Times. “But the rides will be something fun.”

Beppu is already an onsen tourist destination—there are more than 2,000 hot springs for visitors to choose from. However the city recently launched an initiative to become the “spa city of the world.” Last year, Beppu welcomed 437,764 foreign tourists.

No completion date for the project has yet been announced.

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credits: travel and leisure magazine, cailey rizzo, bravo

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