Volcano Bay

BubbaQuest

BubbaQuest

Well-Known Member
Has anyone tried one of the Uni hotel busses to get to Volcano Bay yet? Wondering if Cabana Bay is still the best choice since you can easily walk to the parks.
 
captainkidd

captainkidd

Well-Known Member
I would have no issues about getting to the park 1st thing in the morning. My issue would be having to run around like a chicken with my head cut off to get everything in. I like to stop and smell the roses. Especially at a park like that. But at least it seems the option is available to those who want to ride everything and don't mind the commando style touring. It does give me hope that in time when the park is more completed and some of the issues have been worked out, there will be a happy medium to experience the park.
 
lebeau

lebeau

Well-Known Member
BubbaQuest said:
Has anyone tried one of the Uni hotel busses to get to Volcano Bay yet? Wondering if Cabana Bay is still the best choice since you can easily walk to the parks.
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I took the bus from Royal Pacific to the park. No issues. Waited about 2 minutes for the bus to the park and a bus was waiting when we were ready to leave. Both buses were less than half full.
 
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opshannon

Member
This thread is so massive, I apologize in advance for not being able to find if this has been asked before, but are there any posts or first hand accounts of wait times for slides at Aquatica or the Disney water parks? That is, what are the wait times like at parks with traditional lines? I'm not asking for the sake of trying to figure out how VB has affected their attendence, but rather to figure out how long people are waiting in traditional lines at other parks in Orlando. I've been to all but VB. I cannot ever remember waiting 40+ minutes for any slides at any of the parks. There have been times I've skipped a ride because of time (the two tube race slide at BB - Downhill Double Dipper?).
 
No Name

No Name

Well-Known Member
When you try to fundamentally change the way people go about doing something, like visiting a water park, you have to go big or go home. Volcano Bay has to be sucessful for virtual queueing to be seen as a successful concept.

If the long waits and low satisfaction continues, the system will be seen as a failure, even if the problem lies elsewhere.

TheDad said:
Okay, so I'll agree that capacity issues are part of the problem.....but and its a big but. We can't sit here and act like they shouldn't have expected these capacity issues. Wet n wild was #4 most visited park in the country.
In this day and age, trust me Universal is using analytics. They knew exactly the amount of people that would come to this park....They also knew exactly how Tapu, Tapu would handle the volume. Also, don't tell me about inexperienced ride ops slowing things down either especially two weeks into it. I also don't want to hear that they had no back up plan. They had to know this was going to happen. This is not Universals first time opening up a park. If you think this whole situation wasn't intentionally done, then you are choosing to be naive about this. This is why they are fast tracking additional slides before the park even opened up.. This was the plan all along. Multi billion dollar organizations don't fall into chaos like this by accident. They plan chaos.

There is also a fix for this whole problem.....wait for it....Reduce capacity!!!! Universal will never do that. They would rather you wait around and spend more money on drinks and food... And this was the intended master plan all along!
I read a thread this morning how someone said things were improving. He got to ride 7 whole slides the other day.
It is amazing how people are willing to put the blinders on for Universal.
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Well, if they intentionally made capacity low, boy is it backfiring...

If for whatever reason they wanted to do that, they should've built the slides with higher capacity, but then, based on crowd levels, chosen to operate at lower capacity. That would've left them options. Now they are stuck.
 
mergatroid

mergatroid

Well-Known Member
opshannon said:
This thread is so massive, I apologize in advance for not being able to find if this has been asked before, but are there any posts or first hand accounts of wait times for slides at Aquatica or the Disney water parks? That is, what are the wait times like at parks with traditional lines? I'm not asking for the sake of trying to figure out how VB has affected their attendence, but rather to figure out how long people are waiting in traditional lines at other parks in Orlando. I've been to all but VB. I cannot ever remember waiting 40+ minutes for any slides at any of the parks. There have been times I've skipped a ride because of time (the two tube race slide at BB - Downhill Double Dipper?).
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We go a few times a year to TL or BB (mainly TL though). I tend to ride the slides straight after park opening as it's better than queuing later on. I can only go off my personal experience however I've never seen or been in queues surpassing 45 minutes, even in Summer. I haven't however yet experienced the new slide at TL so can't comment on that. I also think that a virtual queue does change crowd behaviour somewhat by 'distorting' wait times. Certain people would never join a physical queue beyond an hour fo a water slide, however will join a virtual queue for 3-4 hours. The affects of this can create interesting debates into which system is better depending on your preferences and your own behaviours when queueing, they both have pros and cons.
 
BuddyThomas

BuddyThomas

Well-Known Member
Evan-500 said:
While I don't disagree. There is such thing as preview pricing. That's how Broadway shows do their previews.

Universal would have benefited from a month of limited capacity hard-ticket previews, like $45 a pop, test out everything with the risk of things not being up and running.
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One point of clarification here. I work in professional theatre in NYC. Broadway shows no longer discount preview performances. They should, but they have not done so in years and years and years. You pay the same thing on first preview performance as you pay after the show opens. Unless you are Hamilton or Hello Dolly, and then they raise the ticket price on what seems like a daily basis.
 
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Disney Analyst

Disney Analyst

Well-Known Member
BuddyThomas said:
One point of clarification here. I work in professional theatre in NYC. Broadway shows no longer discount preview performances. They should, but they have not done so in years and years and years. You pay the same thing on first preview performance as you pay after the show opens. Unless you are Hamilton or Hello Dolly, and then you raise your ticket price on what seems like a daily basis.
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Well that's silly.
 
lebeau

lebeau

Well-Known Member
TheDad said:
I'm still up in the air about which waterpark I will visit in July. At this point I am leaning towards one of the Disney Parks though. My kids will lose their minds if they can't do a slide or something every 15-20 min or so. haha!
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That being the case, I wouldn't chance it. Go with a familiar Disney water park this year. Next year, they should have Volcano Bay figured out. Check it out on your next Orlando trip.

Like I said before, we enjoyed it. But we were using it to break up park days during an extended Universal trip. If your goal is to ride as many slides as possible, Volcano Bay is going to frustrate you. That's not likely to change dramatically this summer.
 
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RalphinSC

Member
TheDad said:
We are about a month in from opening day now and I still don't fully believe that soft openings or more time is really going to get ride times down to an acceptable level. I don't know whats to blame for this exactly. Maybe its a combination of Tapu, Tapu and the frequent slide breakdowns that should be expected when the rides themselves become technology driven, but I still believe these long wait times are to a degree purposeful.

I'm using Trip advisor and this board as my only way of gauging if wait times are decreasing. It doesn't appear as if they have or will, at least to a level where guests are waiting less than 45 min for most rides. (this is being kind, btw). They now have over 300 reviews mostly saying the same thing, "Don't come to this park if you plan on riding rides". You can tell some of these reviews are a few people from these boards throwing shade on the park because that's what they do, but I do believe that I lot of these are legit as well.

I still believe that this park was built with different expectations from Universal. It's obvious to see that this park was created with a strong focus to maximize profit once customers are through the front gate. I believe this is being done by trying to create a paradigm shift with the guests to change their mind set from viewing this as a water park to viewing it as a resort like environment. I believe they are trying to change the paradigm of "lets go to the park and see how many rides we are going to do" to " lets go to the park and relax in a resort like environment, eat some quality food, have a few drinks and maybe catch a few rides". Which isn't a horrible concept to be honest with you and could be a nice change of pace from the other parks in Orlando. Most people including myself are usually pretty exhausted at the end of their vacation once all of the running around is done. With that being said, I don't think peoples patterns on how they enjoy a water park are going to change any time soon. I also think Universal is is going to have an uphill battle in the long run with attracting guests to this park if wait times don't decrease.

I'm still up in the air about which waterpark I will visit in July. At this point I am leaning towards one of the Disney Parks though. My kids will lose their minds if they can't do a slide or something every 15-20 min or so. haha!
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I went several times last week and gave an extensive report here. Longest tapped wait was 120 minutes (ended up being about 90 minutes) and longest wait in an actual line was about ten minutes. If you get there when the park opens, you can easily ride all the slides you want and then use the afternoon relaxing in the pools and rivers between tap times to recover from all the stairs you climbed that morning. People are taking the absolute worst wait at the peak of the day and applying that as gospel for an entire experience. Never rode less than a dozen slides a day and rode the water coaster 4-5 times each day I was in the park. If someone comes in at 11am and taps the body plunge, then I really have no sympathy if they are going to complain about having to wait three hours for it. It's a walk-on for most of that first hour.
 
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RalphinSC

Member
TheDad said:
Ralph, awesome to hear that you had a blast at VB, but if you have to run to a water park early in the morning just to have couple of hours of ride time...You are missing the point completely! The wait times that you are talking about for a water park is considered a TOTAL FAIL!!!! Morning, afternoon, evening it doesn't matter. Ride times for any water ride should not be longer than 45 minutes and that is an absolute worse case scenario!

What you are talking about above is called making concessions! Guess what Ralph? It is a water park. I don't want to go to a water park at 9am in the morning when it is 70-80 degrees... I want to go when it is hot!!!
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So, basically, you are admitting that you want to have your cake and eat it too. Do you go to Disney at all? Do you go to the major theme parks? I have been to nearly every waterpark in Orlando. And they ALL get busy when it's hot.

You are basically admitting that the problem is yourself and your unrealistic expectations. If you want to show up at 11am and expect a short wait time, I have absolutely no sympathy for you whatsoever. You are better served going to a less popular park. It is not going to get better for you, keep drinking from the bottom half of the cup.

I'll just keep having wonderful vacation days and leaving with a smile on my face. toodles........
 
captainkidd

captainkidd

Well-Known Member
I don't mind getting to a water park at 9:00AM, but I don't want to be running around like a mad man to get on as many slides as possible. And that seems to be the only option. Out of every 5 or 6 reviews I read, there's one that reads that the park was great, no lines, etc. But all those reviews include getting right in before opening, having no TapuTapu issues, and going like crazy for 90 minutes. But from say 10:30 on, you better like the lazy river and wave pool.
 
R

rushtest4echo

Well-Known Member
Amongst all of VB's issues with capacity, tapu, lockers, food, unreliable slides, queues and the other stuff that the most disappointing aspect is really the terrible choices relating to materials and the weak theming throughout much of the park.

I almost fell over laughing when my wife and I were at a hotel recently and the shower was covered in glass backsplash tiles and she remarked "wow those look like authentic waturi fearless river tiles".

Needless to say it wasn't a compliment for VB...
 
misterID

misterID

Well-Known Member
RalphinSC said:
So, basically, you are admitting that you want to have your cake and eat it too. Do you go to Disney at all? Do you go to the major theme parks? I have been to nearly every waterpark in Orlando. And they ALL get busy when it's hot.

You are basically admitting that the problem is yourself and your unrealistic expectations. If you want to show up at 11am and expect a short wait time, I have absolutely no sympathy for you whatsoever. You are better served going to a less popular park. It is not going to get better for you, keep drinking from the bottom half of the cup.

I'll just keep having wonderful vacation days and leaving with a smile on my face. toodles........
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Wow, that was....odd & unnecessarily hostile.
 

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