Wild River Country in North Little Rock will no longer host adult nights after a "handful" of people became "unruly" at an event Saturday night, park officials say.
Chris Schillcutt, the water park's general manager, said the adults-only event started getting out of hand when close to 2,000 people lined up to purchase tickets about 7 p.m. Saturday.
"Only a handful of people decided not to be adults and the police had to take care of that," Schillcutt said.
There were several off-duty North Little Rock police officers working the event, North Little Rock Police Department spokesman Sgt. Brian Dedrick said, and about an additional 15 on-duty police officers responded to the water park.
"We had to go out there because one of the off-duty officers said [the event] was getting out of control before the doors even opened at 8:30 [p.m.]," Dedrick said.
Dedrick said officers reported a lot of drinking and "too many fights to count" from the adults-only night.
By the time it started getting dark Saturday night, a man ran up to a ticket window where a teenage employee was working and stole a stack of tickets, Schillcutt said. The manager said the large crowd made it difficult for the man to be chased down.
Over the weekend, Dedrick said North Little Rock police received 30 tips about a woman who posted on social media claiming to have helped steal the tickets. Dedrick said normally the department would let water park management decide whether or not to pursue charges for the stolen tickets but police are "looking in to it" because of the number of officers required to control the event.
Videos of people fighting in the parking lot surfaced on social media, but Schillcutt said he didn't witness those fights himself. There were also reports of people jumping the fence into the water park to avoid ticket lines, but Schillcutt said those people jumped an outside perimeter fence into the ticket-purchasing area.
"All the pictures I've seen [of people jumping] are of the outer fence," Schillcutt said. "I've seen no pictures of people climbing over the [inner perimeter] fence. If we had reports of that, we would have had security take care of it."
Police made one arrest for public intoxication, Dedrick said.
"We were just trying to get everyone out of the park," Dedrick said. "Usually when [police] show up at that point everyone starts getting in vehicles and getting the heck out of there. It was a flat-out mess."
Wild River Country had 1,448 people enter the park through turnstiles, Schillcutt said. The event did go on as scheduled and lasted until midnight, he said.
"Some people said we closed early, but we didn't," he said. "We were still trying to get people out of the park at 12:45 [a.m.]"
Park officials did close the wave pool at one point because the water was "cloudy," Schillcutt said. When lifeguards cannot see to the bottom of the wave pool, this is a typical park procedure, he said.
Wild River Country edited a post on its Facebook page Saturday at 11:49 p.m. that had advertised the event to say that "Due to the actions [of] a few people Wild River Country will no longer be able to host adult nights."
The original post said tickets for the first adult night of the summer would be $20 for guests 21 and older and that alcohol in aluminum cans would be allowed into the park. It also said that tickets would be limited to the first 1,500 people and that others would be turned away.
"We had three [adult-only] events last year and had no issues," Schillcutt said. "Our last adult night [last year] was close to 2,000 people. We decided to cut it to 1,500 this year because we thought that would be a better number."
The company's Facebook post about canceling future adult nights had almost 500 comments by Monday afternoon with several customers expressing that Wild River Country was not prepared for the large crowd.
"We operated the same way we operated those [events last year], so I don't know where the lack of organization was," Schillcutt said. "We had more people than this last year and not a single incident."
Schillcutt noted there was no property damage to the park and said it was unfortunate that the actions of the few caused the park to cancel future adult nights.
"We are no longer going to hold the adult nights," he said. "If you can't have adults act like adults, then there's just too much liability."