Water slide is put on the map
A 23 second video of the Aqua Loop has been viewed more than 1.9 million times.
ACCORDING to a recent report in the Sunday Times, what started as Brian Ortner of Johannesburg fooling around with his Go Pro video camera on a water slide has become an international sensation on YouTube with just over 1.9 million views.
In December 2012 he strapped the camera to his forehead and stepped into the pod of the Aqua Loop ride in the Wild Waves Water Park and, with a countdown, disappeared into the tube, dropping almost 17 metres and being thrust upwards into a loop by the high pressure water, before finally coming to a stop. His 23 second ‘adventure’ made the Wild Coast Sun’s water slide so popular that overseas viewers mistakenly assumed it was somewhere in the USA, Canada or even Brazil.
Mr Ortner (40) said that towards December last year it started getting 100 views a day, Then it went up to between 30 000 and 50 000 hits a day. “I never expected it would get this big. People from all over the world have been commenting on my video”.
The video’s popularity grew even further when USA radio station 92 Pro-FM posted the video on its Facebook page in August where more than 263 000 people have since shared the video on the social network. By this week, the video had been viewed more than 1.9 million times.
Brian Ortner hopes the video could get more people to visit South Africa. “I think it could be a good advert for the country,” he said.
