BURLESON, April 25, 2017 — The North Texas Jellystone Park is adding 100 luxury RV sites, 20 two-bedroom cabins and two 60-foot tall, 350-foot long inflatable waterslides, all of which should be in place before Father’s Day.
“We’re continuing to grow,” said Steve Stafford, general manager of the North Texas Jellystone Park, which will have a total of 262 RV sites and 117 cabins when the improvements are completed.
Stafford said occupancies have been growing about 35 percent each year for the past six years — ever since Ronnie Bowyer and his family decided to convert the former Rustic Creek Ranch campground into a Jellystone Park.
In fact, demand for rental cabins has been so strong that Bowyer has had to convert numerous RV sites into cabin sites in recent years. But the 76-acre campground now needs not only more RV sites, but much larger sites.
“When this campground first opened in 2000,” Stafford said, “hardly anybody had slide outs in their RVs. But now, many of them do, and so we have to provide bigger campsites to accommodate these larger units.”
The North Texas Jellystone’s 100 new luxury RV sites will be 44 feet wide and 90 feet long and will feature concrete slabs and full hookups. These dimensions will make the Burleson park’s campsites among the largest in the campground industry.
Meanwhile, two new inflatable waterslides are being added to the existing water slides at Pirate’s Cove, the popular 26,000 square foot water play park next door to the North Texas Jellystone that is also owned by the Bowyer family.
Stafford said the new waterslides will include one enclosed flume and one open slide. The two new water slides will complement seven other water slides, a 700-foot long lazy river and a paintball play area.
Of course, the main attractions at the North Texas Jellystone Park are the organized family activities and themed weekends with Yogi Bear™, which help families create unique memories. Activities across Jellystone Parks include arts and crafts, scavenger hunts, face painting, jumping pillows, gem mining as well as plentiful interactions with the bears.
Themed weekends are scheduled from March through early November, and range from family athletic competitions with various sporting events, to Christmas in July with Christmas Carole Karaoke and other holiday themed activities, to pre-Halloween themed weekends with costume and campsite decorating contests and trick or treating.
The weekend of April 21 – 23 will feature the second annual Jellystone Parks’ Got Talent competition in which campers of all ages can compete in Bear Idol Karaoke and play the Jellystone Park Star Trivia Game with Yogi Bear, Boo Boo™ and Cindy Bear™. The annual Christmas in July week is set for July 24 – 30 and will include melted snowball fights, Christmas carol singing, a Christmas bingo scavenger hunt, reindeer games as well as a game of “Pin the Nose on Rudolf.”
The North Texas Jellystone Park also offers suspense-filled outdoor games. During the spring and summer, the park offers an outdoor escape challenge, where teams of two, four or six players come into the zone and quickly solve a series of mostly math problems to obtain the clues that lead them out of the escape challenge before the time runs out.
“A guide goes with the players to help keep them on track and may drop hints if necessary,” Stafford said.
At night, park guests can use the same outdoor area for zombie target shooting. “This gives our campers practices so that by the time October gets here, they can defend themselves against live zombies,” Stafford said.
Stafford said the park improvements and expansions have created a need for more housekeeping, grounds and maintenance staff. The park is also hiring 15 international students this year to help over the period after early to mid-August when Jellystone Park’s high school and college age employees have to return to school.
The North Texas Jellystone Park is open year-round. For more information, please visit www.northtexasjellystone.com
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