Making Waves: How Wilderness Leaders are Shaping the Waterpark Industry

It seems every industry has a trade association affiliated with it. And, as you may have guessed, waterparks, aquatic venues and spray parks are no different.

The World Waterpark Association (WWA), founded in 1981, is an international association with over 1,200 park members representing venues of all shapes and sizes. This noteworthy organization is responsible for helping to set the global standards for safety, operations, and education.

We’re incredibly proud that several of our team members from our property and our Wisconsin Dells property, Wilderness Resort, have leadership roles within the World Waterpark Association (WWA). The next time you visit any of our properties in Tennessee or Wisconsin, you can rest easy knowing our staff overseeing your safety and fun aren’t just following industry standards, they are helping create and lead them.

Here is a quick look at our impressive team members and what they are up to:

Chase Singleton, WWA Board of Directors
Chase Singleton, Assistant General Manager at Wilderness at the Smokies, currently serves on the WWA Board of Directors. The WWA Board oversees the entire association, advocating for safety and establishing best practices for parks throughout the world. Before being elected to this impressive board, Chase dedicated years of service to the WWA, acting as a contributing member of the Safety Committee from 2017 to 2022, and then serving on the Committee Leadership Council as the Safety Committee’s Secretary from 2022 to 2025.

Chase brings a highly specialized perspective to his board seat. His career is deeply rooted in safety, risk management, as well as law enforcement. He has served on the Sevierville Police Department since 2012, including being a SWAT team member since September 2020. He brings an elite level of safety expertise to Wilderness at the Smokies, working his way up through the resort from Water Park Operations Manager and Security to Risk, & Safety Manager before stepping into his current role as Assistant General Manager in 2019. With an MBA from Bethel University and a career built on keeping people safe, having Chase on the board ensures that large resort waterparks like ours are well represented.

Ryan Vaden & Darin Kuhnke, Resort Committee
Operating a massive waterpark resort comes with unique challenges you don’t see at a standalone park. That’s why the WWA Resort Committee exists, and we’re thrilled to have two team members driving this initiative.

Ryan Vaden, our Aquatics Director in Tennessee, is the Chair of the WWA Resort Committee. Ryan has spent over two decades in the aquatics industry, starting his career as a lifeguard at Carter Community Pool in 2002. He then spent several years at Dollywood’s Splash Country, advancing from Lifeguard to Lifeguard Instructor, and eventually Team Lead. In 2009, he brought his talents to Wilderness at the Smokies as an Assistant Aquatics Manager. Over the years, he mastered every level of aquatics leadership at our resort, being promoted to Manager in 2014, Assistant Aquatics Director in 2015, and finally taking the helm as Aquatics Director in 2016.

Ryan’s dedication to the WWA is just as deep. He joined the WWA Education Committee in 2017 and then brought his expertise over to the WWA Resort Committee as Vice Chair in 2021. He officially stepped up as the Committee Chair in 2023.

Darin Kuhnke, our Aquatics Director at Wilderness Resort in Wisconsin, serves right alongside Ryan as a WWA Resort Committee member. Together, they collaborate with other operators to solve resort-specific operational issues and find new ways to improve the guest experience globally.

Darin always had an affinity for water growing up playing in the family pool. He made his official lifeguarding debut in 2006 after being hired at Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells. He spent the next 4 summers & breaks from college working his way up through the ranks of Supervisor and Lifeguard Instructor. After graduating from UW-Whitewater in December 2010, Darin was promoted to Assistant Manager, and shortly after became the Safety Specialist & Aquatics Facility Manager. Opportunity came calling in 2012 when he joined Wilderness Resort as an Aquatics Supervisor in September of that year. His break from management didn’t last long as he was promoted to Aquatics Assistant Manager in December 2012. In 2015 he was promoted to Aquatics Manager and then finally in 2019 he was promoted to Director of Aquatics. Darin became a member of the WWA Resort committee in 2022.

D’Anna Johnson, Education Committee
D’Anna Johnson, our Assistant Aquatics Director in TN, serves as the Vice Chair of the WWA Education Committee. A 2026 Ellis and Associates’ Associate honoree, D’Anna joined the committee in October 2024 and quickly made an impact, being named Vice Chair in December 2025. In this role, she helps develop the training and safety materials that keep waterpark professionals worldwide up to date.

D’Anna has a long, impressive history with us. She started at Wilderness at the Smokies as a lifeguard in May 2015. Over the years, she steadily worked her way up through the ranks, serving as an Aquatics Supervisor and Aquatics Manager before stepping into her current role as Assistant Director of Aquatics in April 2021. Along the way, she even took her operational expertise to Soaky Mountain Waterpark, also owned by our parent company Wilderness Resort and Waterparks, as a Seasonal Operations Manager in 2020.

Her dedication to keeping people safe extends far beyond our waterparks. She also has been serving as an Advanced EMT for the Sevier County Ambulance Service since June 2019, and, more recently, a Paramedic since the fall of 2024.

If you see any of these special team members the next time you are at one of our properties, please take the time to thank them for their commitment to the safety, education and bettering of the waterpark industry around the world.