I'd heard about "Famous Dave's" BBQ restaurants about a decade ago, listening to founder Dave Anderson doing some charity thing on the radio in Wisconsin -- but was only recently able to sample his restaurant's food. My reaction? Wow. Extremely good stuff.

If you're from around Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, or Illinois, you know that the Wisconsin Dells is a tourist nexus, a bit like Branson, Missouri without the shows. But Anderson plans to try to divert a bit of that traffic to Gurnee, Illinois, halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee, with a huge indoor waterpark:

Anderson hopes for similar crowds at his $135 million KeyLime Cove, a 400-room water park resort that opens Friday...

Anderson's vision includes what he calls an "adult-forward strategy," with activities such as cooking classes and wine tastings for parents, and a high level of service, with special attention paid to the quality of food served at KeyLime Cove's restaurants. The informal model is Las Vegas, with its artificial - yet attractive - environment. Think the Paris Hotel and Casino, or New York New York, minus the gambling....

At KeyLime Cove, that world is a tropical resort, awash in pastel colors, with umbrella drinks, floral scents and a layout of shops and restaurants designed to resemble a Key West street. The 65,000-square-foot water park has huge tube and body slides, a lazy river, whirlpools and other features....

Although KeyLime Cove is a new venture, Anderson is a service industry veteran. In 1994, he helped start the Rainforest Cafe, a chain of theme restaurants that includes a Gurnee location.

(As an aside: while I love Famous Dave's, I generally detest Rainforest Cafe. I've been dragged into several different locations, and while the atmosphere is indeed quite a lot of fun, I've also noticed consistently cold food, bad service, and ridiculous prices. But he's only a co-founder.)

The waterpark is meant to compete with the Great Wolf Lodge and other indoor waterparks. In that regard, I don't see it as being major prime-season competition with the Dells (and Dave admits as much) which boasts America's Largest Waterpark. (FYI, the world's largest indoor water park is Japan's Ocean Dome, which can hold a stunning 10,000 people. I don't even want to THINK about the water filters at that place.)

Gurnee is already one of Illinois top tourist destinations, with a Six Flags' Great America and many outlet stores, so Dave's adding to the mix. He apparently originally planned to put the park north of the Wisconsin border, but Gurnee officials drew his business by promising a 20-year 3.5% lodging tax rather than the normal 5%.

According to this report it's certainly not the only waterpark draw near Chicago:

Soon, Chicagoland will have four major hotel waterpark resorts to keep families in Illinois rather than traveling to Wisconsin. KeyLime Cove Resort [80,000 square ft of waterpark] and Grizzly Falls Resort [near O'Hare, with 100,000 sf] will become new competitors with the existing Sheraton Northwest & Waterpark in Arlington Heights and the recently announced Sun Island Resort & Waterpark in Hoffman Estates IL.... Wilderness Resort is underway with its hotel waterpark resort in Sevierville TN, joining the ranks of Great Wolf Resorts and Kalahari Resorts who have constructed waterpark resort projects outside Wisconsin Dells. Owners Peter Helland and Tom Lucke plan to build a 264-room, six-story lodge and waterpark next to the city’s planned 200,000 sf Events Center. Both are expected to open in Summer 2007. Wilderness Resort also proposes building a second resort hotel on a separate 14-acre site southeast of the Event Center. The second project would have about 348 guest rooms and an 80,000 sf indoor waterpark.

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