It won't just be children bouncing off the walls with excitement, Ant Morell promises. Entering the sprawling venue, it becomes clear he's talking quite literally.
PHOTO: Jiraporn Kuhakan
The space, home to Bangkok's latest attraction Bounce, looks something like what would happen if Willy Wonka delved into the world of extreme sports. People are soaring metres above the ground, pulling flips and defying gravity by running along vertical walls splattered with exuberant shades of yellow, blue and pink.
Below them, and the source of all these aerial antics, is a sea of trampolines -- 105 of them to be precise.
"Bounce started three years ago essentially with the concept of putting one trampoline next to another," said Mr Morell, an Australian entrepreneur and co-founder of Bounce Inc.
Off the wall: Bounce is now open at The Street Ratchada.
The concept has developed significantly since those early days. A quick glance around the massive trampoline park reveals dodgeball courts where players can propel themselves both vertically and horizontally from inclined trampolines; giant inflatable airbags; freejumping and wall running arenas; and slam dunk rings.
"We experimented with our first venue … with the hope that kids would love it, and maybe some older people would love it," Mr Morell said.
It's evidently worked. Bounce drew several million customers through its doors in its first year, and has continued to grow since. In the past year it's opened venues in Hong Kong, Portugal and South Africa.
But occupying the entire top floor of the new The Street shopping mall on Ratchadaphisek Road, the 5,600-square-metre Bangkok venue is the largest of Bounce's 12 branches worldwide.
Bounce at The Street Ratchada
It's a bold venture for the company, but Mr Morell is confident the concept will translate well to a Thai audience.
"In a world that is obsessed with screens, here's a place where young people can come and actually get into the game," he said.
A lot of research has gone into perfecting the layout, ensuring not only safety but maximising the fun factor. The designers borrowed elements from sports like parkour, whose influence is immediately apparent in the free running and wall running sections of Bounce.
Bounce at The Street Ratchada
"We went out and watched circus schools, acrobatics, freerunners, and put it all in a blender," said Mr Morell.
"The premise was to make a place for people where the previously impossible is made possible, and do it in a safe well-managed environment."
The initial desire to build the business, he said, came around the time that GoPro cameras were growing in popularity and YouTube was being flooded with first-person footage of extreme sports. As middle-aged men, Mr Morell and his friends were watching the videos and felt inspired to experience something similar -- without endangering themselves.
"Most people are not in the less-than-1% of the population who are willing to take extreme risks," he said. "Yet given the chance, everyone still wants to experience the feeling of flying through the air. They just need the right environment."
Pouring 300 million baht into the construction of the Bangkok venue, Bounce has spared no expense in ensuring that environment is both as safe and as accessible as possible.
The trampolines have been flown in from the US. The giant airbags come from Austria, where they were developed by former professional snowboarders looking to work on their hang time. And more than 25,000 springs have been imported from Melbourne.
Between each of the trampolines, every square inch of exposed support structure is covered by more than two inches of world gymnastics-grade padding, which also comes from Australia.
"This place is built so it's the absolute best of its kind, so it's able to deal with anyone from an early novice just having fun, all the way through to an elite athlete for whom jumping is their career," Mr Morell said.
"We have a large air sport community: skiers, snowboarders, wakeboarders skateboarders, divers, BMX riders, and circus performers. Anyone whose sport involves being in the air, trampolining is a great way of repeating time after time and just practising aerial manoeuvres."
He's quick to stress though that one of Bounce's biggest draws is that it is open to all age groups and all athletic abilities.
"It doesn't matter if they're a five-year-old at a birthday party with a bunch their friends, whether they're a teenager learning to do some amazing tricks, whether they're a family just looking for a fun activity where everyone can get involved, or whether they're a serious athlete," he said.
"There's a huge amount of progression built into what you do here … It's active entertainment, but it's also got a sporting edge to it where you can get better, go higher, learn new tricks. There's constantly something new for each person to try."
Not only does it give the chance to get airborne, Bounce also offers customers a different challenge to get to grips with -- a Clip 'n' Climb climbing park. Occupying 255 square metres, it features 24 themed indoor walls which deviate from traditional climbing walls and incorporate skills like balance and jumping. Each attraction is equipped with an automatic belay device which takes in the slack as you climb and lowers you gently to the ground.
But Mr Morell seems most excited about the high performance trampolining area. It is there, on what he terms the park's "double black run", where the most extreme action happens.
The springs on those trampolines are much more powerful, meaning jumpers can get about five metres off the ground. On one of the trampolines dubbed the "Super Tramp", which Mr Morell said is the largest in the world at 5x5 metres, jumpers can strap themselves in to skis or a board and work on their off-axis aerial moves while minimising the risk of injury.
But according to Mr Morell, there's also more than just the obvious fun factor or extreme sport aspects to trampolining.
"We have athletes just training here for core stability, because it's unbelievable exercise -- 30 minutes on a trampoline is equivalent to 10 minutes of running," he said.
"It's low impact. A massive cardio workout. Good for muscle conditioning and coordination.
"Bounce is designed, and its whole vision, is to be a place people can come back to time and time again. Whether that's just because it's good healthy fun, and it's so enjoyable that people want to come back, or whether it's because they want to progress," Mr Morell said.
"If you think about when people go bungee jumping, the actual words they use to describe it is 'I've been bungee jumping'. We want people to say, 'I go to Bounce', not 'I've been to Bounce'. "
Photos: Jiraporn Kuhakan
Bounce is located at The Street on Ratchadaphisek Road, north of the Thailand Cultural Centre MRT station and is open daily from 10am to 10pm. Tickets cost 390 baht for everyone over 110cm tall, 290 baht for children under 110cm and 1,200 baht for a family of four. Discount sessions are available for students. For more information visit www.bounceinc.co.th.
