Seagaia Ocean Dome, Miyazaki

The Seagaia Ocean Dome, was one of the world's largest indoor waterparks, located in Miyazaki, Japan. The Polynesia-themed Ocean Dome, which was part of the Sheraton Seagaia Resort, with the world's biggest retractable roof, which was opened and closed according to the weather conditions; 12,000 square metres of sandy beach, crushed from 600 tonnes of stones; an "ocean" six times larger than an Olympic pool, filled with 13,500 tonnes of unsalted, chlorinated water kept hot at 28deg C, equipped with a wave-machine with 200 variations, and listed in the Guinness World Records as the biggest simulated pool. This 850-acre resort in Miyazaki, on the southern island of Kyushu, boasts five hotels, several golf-courses, a botanical park and a zoo; but due to bankruptcy, the dome was later bought by Ripplewood, an American private-equity fund, in 2001 for 16.2 billion yen, which was less than 10% of its construction costs of 200 billion yen. Ripplewood had also invested an additional 3.5 billion yen on renovations for the dome; but even after the remodeling of the resort, the hotel closed down with liabilities of 276 billion yen. ()