When the gates open at Baha Bay at 10am, the first guests through skip the slides. They head straight for the FlowCurl. Usually it’s kids, sometimes it’s adults, and they all want the same thing: to be first on the wave.
Baha Bay is the water park at Baha Mar, the luxury resort on Nassau’s Cable Beach, and its FlowCurl was the first one ever built. Ownership wanted a ride mix with something nobody in the region had seen, the kind of one-of-a-kind attraction a luxury resort is built around. Five years after opening, it’s still the ride with a line.
“There’s always a line, I’ll say that,” says Melissa Lockwood, General Manager at Baha Mar. “It’s one ride where there’s always people ready to go.”
Earn the Curl
Baha Bay runs the FlowCurl with its divider in about 95% of the time. One side is a FlowRider sheet wave, the other is the curl, and two riders go every 60 to 90 seconds. The split keeps the line moving and gives every guest a place to start.
Everyone starts on a bodyboard on the FlowRider side. To cross over, riders have to show the team they can handle the board on their own: across the wave, back again, up and down, a full square. Stand-up riders who meet the 48-inch height requirement start the process over, back on the FlowRider side, until they’ve earned the curl a second time.
“The curl, especially on a stand-up board, is a different beast,” says Lockwood. “We want people to grow their skill set, but we also want to make sure they’re having a good experience and doing it in the safest way possible. So we’re strict with that.”
For a resort guest, that ladder plays out over a whole stay. Kids get their first lesson on day one, come back to the park every day to practice, and by the end of the week some of them have graduated to the curl side. It’s a goal that keeps families coming back to the same spot all vacation.
The FlowCurl gives a week-long stay something to chase.
The Bahamas has nothing else like it, so most guests are trying a wave for the first time, and so were most of the team running it. Baha Bay put the time into training staff who had never worked a FlowRider so they could coach guests with confidence. It shows up in the stories Lockwood hears most, from parents who stop her in the park to name the team member who made their kid’s day.
“People save a lot of money to come here,” she says. “To know my team was a highlight of a trip they’ve been looking forward to for years, those are the stories that stick with me.”
Even guests who already know the product make the trip. Cruise passengers who rode a FlowRider on their ship come over to Baha Bay on port days to try something different.
For travelers who ride boards, the choice of Caribbean resort can come down to one ride.
“If you’re looking at a Caribbean vacation and you’re into board sports, where else do you go?” says Lockwood. “We do see people choosing to come to Baha Mar because of this attraction.”
The End Zone
The FlowCurl anchors Baha Bay’s entertainment zone, alongside a drop slide tower and an Umami Burger, in the part of the park designed for night operation. Families who plan to spend the day on the wave book the cabanas next to it. Everyone else grabs a table at the restaurant and watches.
“It’s a spectator attraction as well,” says Lockwood. When a skilled rider is throwing tricks, guests stop, watch, and grab a drink or a bite while they do. The restaurant feels the difference on the days the wave isn’t running.
The zone also earns outside regular hours. Guests can book a private hour on the wave before or after the park opens, with coaching, towels, and food and beverage, for groups of up to 10. Baha Bay is working with local sales partners to pitch corporate buyouts of the whole entertainment zone for evening team events, and Lockwood is retooling Baha Bay After Dark, a ticketed night event built around the wave, for 2027.
The Draw of the Boards
Even guests who already know the product make the trip. Cruise passengers who rode a FlowRider on their ship come over to Baha Bay on port days to try something different.
For travelers who ride boards, the choice of Caribbean resort can come down to one ride.
“If you’re looking at a Caribbean vacation and you’re into board sports, where else do you go?” says Lockwood. “We do see people choosing to come to Baha Mar because of this attraction.”
The next step was giving more of those riders a date to book around. Lockwood had seen what a FlowRider competition could do for a park. At Yas Waterworld she helped host the World Flowboarding Championships. She and Josh Ornelaz, FlowRider’s Sports Manager, talked for years about bringing a Flow Tour stop to Baha Mar, and in 2025 the Caribbean Flow Jam became the tour’s season finale. In 2026, it closed out the season again.
The timing was deliberate. September is one of the quietest months in Nassau, so the event fills the calendar right when the resort needs it. Riders book at a group rate at the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar, and the 2025 promo code drove about 50 room nights. Plenty of riders show up days early to log practice time before Friday’s open session and Saturday’s competition.
“A lot of these guys knew about the wave, but maybe didn’t have the motivation to come,” says Lockwood. “The competition was really that catalyst.”
The event spills well past the riders. One of Baha Bay’s lifeguards, who runs a DJ business on the side, plays the full six hours of competition. Guests who came for the slides wander over to see what’s going on and fill the surrounding F&B space, while the team gets to learn from some of the best riders in the sport. The 2025 event brought local TV coverage and a jump in social engagement, and a local beverage distributor came on board with prizes. Lockwood is already working on a title sponsor for 2027.
“It’s like a warm, fuzzy feeling community,” she says. “There’s no egos involved.”
At the other end of the calendar, the wave helps carry the resort’s busiest stretch. Each December, Surfing with Elves puts the lifeguard team in elf costumes for holiday music, kids’ crafts, the occasional Grinch, and this year, a synchronized routine on the wave. It’s free for anyone in the park.
One of a Kind
Being first comes with a learning curve. The FlowCurl at Baha Bay is one of a kind, every part is custom, and an island climate puts more wear on equipment than most locations see. Lockwood leans on FlowRider for all of it.
“There’s not a pool of tons of people trained how to maintain this type of ride,” she says. “Being able to fly FlowRider in to guide us, or to come on site and support, has been instrumental.”
Day to day, Baha Bay’s operations and engineering teams inspect the ride every morning and follow FlowRider’s daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance checklists. When something comes up, the team is a phone call or a WhatsApp away, from engineering all the way up to President Marshall Myrman.
“Having that mutual interest that we’re successful together is key for us,” says Lockwood. “It’s not, hey, you bought it, it’s yours to deal with.”
The Crown Jewel, Run Right
Asked what she’d tell an operator on the fence, Lockwood points to everything a FlowRider can carry beyond the ride itself.
“If you want something you can really program around, that can drive revenue, drive events, and build community beyond your regular slides and wave pools, it’s the crown jewel of your park,” she says. “If you run it and operate it the right way.”
