Longtime Bay Area water park Raging Waters closes permanently

After nearly four decades of lazy rivers, water slides and sunburns, Raging Waters is closing permanently. The announcement was made on the Bay Area water park’s website Wednesday.

“Raging Waters San Jose is closed for the season and will not be reopening in 2024. We are thankful for the San Jose community and for our outstanding Team Members for helping us bring Northern California’s Largest Water Park to life for nearly four decades,” the statement read. “Thank you for all the wonderful memories, San Jose!”

The park, which opened in the mid-1980s, was jokingly called “Raging Hormones” by some locals — in the summertime, the 23-acre complex on San Jose’s Lake Cunningham was filled with gaggles of rowdy teens. “Think of it as a Club Med for teenagers,” the Santa Cruz Sentinel wrote in 1993.

Among the attractions were a 350,000-gallon wave pool, kiddie play areas and lots of water slides. The slides were a big selling point. In 1988, general manager Jim Morgan told the Peninsula Times Tribune that water slides were “a relatively new concept in entertainment.”

“Some of the kids who come out here a lot have really mastered the slides,” he said. “They know that as they are descending if they ride on their rears and shoulder blades, they are going to pick up speed.”

Around that time, Raging Waters also added a skateboard ramp that it billed as one of the largest in the world. Boomeramp was called “the most challenging ramp in the world” and occasionally hosted pro skateboarding events. 

The closure comes a year after the Raging Waters in Sacramento shuttered. That park is potentially getting new life, however. KCRA reported last month that a Southern California group plans on reviving the water park concept with the name “Calibunga.”