Ebenezer Floppen Slopper's Wonderful Water Slides

Ebenezer Floppen Slopper's Wonderful Water slides is an abandoned waterpark located on a large hill on Roosevelt Road and Route 83 in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois. It first opened on July 5, 1980 with two 800 foot concrete water slides and gradually added 5 additional slides and a wading pool. The water park became a major summer attraction for residents of surrounding towns and communities as people lined up for rides down the large winding slides. When the two main slides first began operation, people slid down in groups of up to eight people at a time on rubber mats. The 5 other slides added to the park included 2 flat racer slides in which people slid down head first on folded rubber mats, 2 semi enclosed tube body slides, and a smaller inner tube slide which emptied into a nearby wading pool. The slides were also unique in that they were lined with a blue rubber foam material which would prevent injuries from contacts with the slide walls. Due to the design of the 2 main large concrete slides, especially with the V-shaped configuration of their side walls, people could also slide quite high up the walls of the slides, especially when hitting a turn at high speeds. Around 1987, the large concrete slides were re surfaced with flat bottoms with humps and bumps in which people went down solo on inner tubes, getting bumped up and down and sideways as they went down the renovated slides and the park was re named "Doc River's Roaring Rapids water park."

The park subsequently closed for good at the end of the 1989 season for unknown reasons. Neglected and abandoned since, the slides and wading pool have fallen into ruin. As of July 2009, the two large concrete slides have numerous cracks and splits in the concrete that have sprouted saplings that are 6 to 8 feet tall as of July 2009, the rubber foam lining has peeled off the slide walls and now lies jumbled in the slides, the slide walls are covered with graffiti, and the slides are also filled with tree branches and dirt, especially about 150 feet above the plunge pool where a retaining wall had recently collapsed and filled one of the slides to its rim with dirt and weeds. Both racers are cracked and peeled very badly with surfacing missing in a few spots with more weeds and overgrowth sprouting from those, the body slides are choked with leaves and branches, the smaller inner tube slide has numerous saplings sprouting from its base and is also split and cracked pretty badly, and the wading pool is also cracked and full of weeds. Other retaining walls elsewhere in the park that once held elevated gardens continue to sag severely as of July 2009, and it has also been mentioned that the hill itself resembles "an overgrown jungle."

References

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebrown3506/sets/72157603429554751/
• http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-wht-pictures,0,4847487.photogallery?index=chi-am10-wht-water-slide-photo
• http://xml.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-wht-slide-w-zone-10-jul10,0,3040107.column