By James Bowler

PHOTOS: Residents big and small show up to support Kinsmen water slides voting

Jul 21, 2014 | 4:41 PM

Parents and children soaked up the sun and some splashing fun at the Prince Albert Kinsmen Water Park Monday.

Officials at the water park were offering a free barbecue in support of the voting process for the Kraft Celebration Tour that began Monday morning with the Kinsmen water slides a top 10 finalist.

Among the parents and children were a few dignitaries including Mayor Greg Dionne, who remembers his first time coming to the water park.

“My first time here was about 25 years ago, I’d been in the city for about a year,” said Dionne. “My sister came with her young kids and said ‘what can we do,’ and I said ‘I know the city has a water park.’”

“We came here and it was a great event for us, we sat on two lawn chairs and read and the kids spent about four hours going up and down the water slide.”

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He added he has been voting periodically throughout the day for the water park on the Kraft website.

Ysanne Gabora, or ‘Mommy’ as her daughter corrected paNOW, said enjoying the water slides when she was a child made for a great summer.

“It was like the best day ever,” said Gabora. “We used to come spend the day, and just go down the slides, and have snacks and play and get treats.”

She said now that she is a mother she really enjoys bringing her own children.

“It’s even more fun now because we’re doing swimming lessons here, so we get to come every day for two weeks,” she said. “When the water slides were open it was really fun to see them get so excited.”

And Gabora added it’s difficult to let her kids down every time they visit the water park.

“They keep pointing to the slides wanting to go down, and we have to say ‘no they’re broken.’”

Monick Buettner is not from the area, but she has visited the water park in the past when she was a kid.

“It was so great that in PA there was finally something that kids could go outside and play with and not go all the way to the lake,” said Buettner. “We came with school trips, it was a lot of fun.”

Buettner brought her two daughters with her from Ottawa, Ont. to visit her parents, but was disappointed when she couldn’t share that same experience with them.

“I was hoping that they’d be able to, but then heard from my mom that they were closed this year,” said Buettner. “I really hope it comes back so that next summer when we come there might be some slides.”

She said that she’s been voting as well as her husband and sisters back home in Ottawa.

Voting continues into Tuesday on the Kraft Celebration Tour website.

A senior account manager with Edelman, a marketing company that represents Kraft, said hundreds of thousands of votes have hit the site since this morning.

You can vote as many times as you can click that mouse button. Voting closes on Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. eastern time.

jbowler@panow.com

On Twitter: @journalistjim