Volcano Bay

[captainkidd]

I'd be interested to see where these reviews came from. As you see below 'Trip Advisor' reviews don't really mirror your claim?



I'm not knocking VB but for a debate to be worthwhile it's better to be fair.

The initial reviews were from the press, and in regards to the rides themselves, from those that got to ride. I was only looking on YouTube. Since then, it's become a nightmare for Universal. They really screwed themselves. There is no fix to TapuTapu without standby lines. Let's round up and say there are 20 attractions and right now the average wait is 2 hours. To get that down to an hour, you'd obviously need 40 attractions. Not happening. If they add standby lines, they will have egg on their face for promising no standing in lines.

 

[mergatroid]

The initial reviews were from the press, and in regards to the rides themselves, from those that got to ride. I was only looking on YouTube. Since then, it's become a nightmare for Universal. They really screwed themselves. There is no fix to TapuTapu without standby lines. Let's round up and say there are 20 attractions and right now the average wait is 2 hours. To get that down to an hour, you'd obviously need 40 attractions. Not happening. If they add standby lines, they will have egg on their face for promising no standing in lines.

I'm a bit sketchy on this Tapu, Tapu thing. Are there any slides there that you can just start queuing for without a Tapu, Tapu reservation for it first? If I understand correctly (?) the answer's no, but some slides that have immediate availability will let you first make a reservation and then go straight on?

 

[seascape]

I'm a bit sketchy on this Tapu, Tapu thing. Are there any slides there that you can just start queuing for without a Tapu, Tapu reservation for it first? If I understand correctly (?) the answer's no, but some slides that have immediate availability will let you first make a reservation and then go straight on?

Yes, you can go straight on the slides that have no wait, but if you do you lose your place in the virtual line so most people wont do that and will get upset. That is the problem and why its a good idea to have both types of lines.

 

[squidward]

Yes, you can go straight on the slides that have no wait, but if you do you lose your place in the virtual line so most people wont do that and will get upset. That is the problem and why its a good idea to have both types of lines.

From what I understand, you can only go on the slides that aren't part of Tapu Tapu, regardless if there are no lines or not. And from everything we've seen so far, none of the slides have had no wait.

 

[mergatroid]

Yes, you can go straight on the slides that have no wait, but if you do you lose your place in the virtual line so most people wont do that and will get upset. That is the problem and why its a good idea to have both types of lines.

So let me get this right. You have a reservation for 3 hours later for one of the big slides and go for a swim for an hour. With 2 hours remaining for your reservation you have a walk around the park and see a slide with a 5 minute wait. You touch your Tapu, Tapu band on this kiosk to ride it, however doing so cancels your reservation for 2 hours later?

Sounds a pretty terrible concept if true. I suppose financially it makes sense for Universal as you're trapped (for want of a better word) in the park for longer so more likely to spend more money on food and drink.

 

[JoeCamel]

Besides the volcano testing that was occurring pre park opening, I haven't heard anything about the volcano erupting on a nightly basis.
Has anyone witnessed this? Is it a show? Is it something to see? Is there more to it vs. what was being showed pre opening?
Also do they pump any sound through the park when the volcano erupts?

Would like to hear some opinions on this if possible.
This is something that I'm excited to see.

I think if you wait til Thursday you will see.
As far as throughput ops has not trained in the real world yet. Give them a few weeks and they will stop erring on the side of extreme safety and be loading faster. This is the third day people!

 

[UCF]

So let me get this right. You have a reservation for 3 hours later for one of the big slides and go for a swim for an hour. With 2 hours remaining for your reservation you have a walk around the park and see a slide with a 5 minute wait. You touch your Tapu, Tapu band on this kiosk to ride it, however doing so cancels your reservation for 2 hours later?

Sounds a pretty terrible concept if true. I suppose financially it makes sense for Universal as you're trapped (for want of a better word) in the park for longer so more likely to spend more money on food and drink.

Without tapu tapu, you'd be trapped on a line for the same 3 hours, without being able to go to the wave pool, or eating, or going to the slide. The concept of tapu tapu is to allow you to do other things while waiting in lines, not allow you to wait in multiple lines at once. If they did that, the wait times would be even longer.

Its apparent they need to reduce the number of express passes being sold... they are less than fair when they cause such large additional wait times after its your time to ride... so the price should go up accordingly (since we know it will not be discontinued)

 

[squidward]

I think if you wait til Thursday you will see.
As far as throughput ops has not trained in the real world yet. Give them a few weeks and they will stop erring on the side of extreme safety and be loading faster. This is the third day people!

I don't understand this argument at all. Was admission discounted for the first few days? We're not talking about some billionaire with no theme park experience who decided to open his 1st park. It's not 1955. Universal in Orlando alone, has almost 30 years of theme park experience. I'll give you the fact that things break down. This happens at every park, every day of the year. But the things I'm reading, like the water in the lazy river not working and the water being too cold in the wave pool. That's unacceptable. But again, the real issue is Tapu Tapu. I don't know the 1st thing about how things work in a theme park, but again, it such common sense that this system could not possibly work without a standby option. Can you imagine getting a FP for Space Mountain at 11:00AM, with a return time for 2:00PM, and the only things you were allowed to do in that 3 hours were the TTA and the Railroad? It's complete absurdity. There is no excuse for the problems they are having regarding Tapu Tapu.

 

[squidward]

Without tapu tapu, you'd be trapped on a line for the same 3 hours, without being able to go to the wave pool, or eating, or going to the slide. The concept of tapu tapu is to allow you to do other things while waiting in lines, not allow you to wait in multiple lines at once. If they did that, the wait times would be even longer.

Its apparent they need to reduce the number of express passes being sold... they are less than fair when they cause such large additional wait times after its your time to ride... so the price should go up accordingly (since we know it will not be discontinued)

Not if they allowed for standby lines. Again, wait times have ranged from 2 to 6 hours. Who is going to want to pay $70 per person to go to a water park, to spend 6 hours in a lazy river or wave pool and go on 2 to 3 slides? Also, they haven't been selling Express passes for the past 3 days. That was a complete disaster as well.

 

[JoeCamel]

I don't understand this argument at all. Was admission discounted for the first few days? We're not talking about some billionaire with no theme park experience who decided to open his 1st park. It's not 1955. Universal in Orlando alone, has almost 30 years of theme park experience. I'll give you the fact that things break down. This happens at every park, every day of the year. But the things I'm reading, like the water in the lazy river not working and the water being too cold in the wave pool. That's unacceptable. But again, the real issue is Tapu Tapu. I don't know the 1st thing about how things work in a theme park, but again, it such common sense that this system could not possibly work without a standby option. Can you imagine getting a FP for Space Mountain at 11:00AM, with a return time for 2:00PM, and the only things you were allowed to do in that 3 hours were the TTA and the Railroad? It's complete absurdity. There is no excuse for the problems they are having regarding Tapu Tapu.

I am not excusing the early open but now that it is it is ridiculous to say it is a fatally flawed design as if it is set in stone. Ops will learn and adjust, there is plenty of capacity and they have the ability to limit entrance so it will work out.

Again it is the third day of Ops having the park open.

 

[Tony Perkis]

Who wants to spend 2 plus hours in a wave pool?

Give me beer, get me an inner tube, and I'm game.

 

[Tony Perkis]

There are 16 reviews as of today. 14 of them are negative. Sorry, I don't buy the "It's opening weekend" excuse. Not in this case. Tapu Tapu was a bad idea from the get go. It was always simple math. That's where all the negativity is coming from.

Heh, 16 reviews after 4 days of operation is almost irrelevant.

And I say this as someone who thinks the park likely opened too early. Sorry, I don't care what bloggers think after day 4. If the issues are still persistent in September, then I'll be more critical.

Sorry for those who got screwed with ticketing, but I won't be able to take advantage of the park until October 2017 or 2018 at the earliest, so just fix the long term plan for the park.

Which means if they're committed to giving a new system a shot, they deserve the benefit of attempting to make it work.

 

[UCF]

The initial reviews were from the press, and in regards to the rides themselves, from those that got to ride. I was only looking on YouTube. Since then, it's become a nightmare for Universal. They really screwed themselves. There is no fix to TapuTapu without standby lines. Let's round up and say there are 20 attractions and right now the average wait is 2 hours. To get that down to an hour, you'd obviously need 40 attractions. Not happening. If they add standby lines, they will have egg on their face for promising no standing in lines.

Can you explain how standby lines would fix any issue at all? The issue is capacity of the rides... how does adding lines fix the capacity? Its not like Tapu Tapu caused the rides to sit idle at all... its purely capacity and operational issues. There may be some confusion about the system as people aren't used to it, but that isn't resulting in people not getting on the rides. The wait times are the issue, whether you stand on the line in person or virtually.

My understanding is some people waited 2 hours to get into Pandora and 4 hours to ride a single ride... totalling 6 hours for one ride. Not too much better than VB. And you were stuck physically waiting in those 6 hour lines, instead of having to ride the lazy river and go on the wave pool while waiting. Neither are good and fun... but thats opening on a holiday weekend for you. I too won't be going until late this year to either... not worth the wait times that will inevitably die down.

 

[Daveeeeed]

Can you explain how standby lines would fix any issue at all? The issue is capacity of the rides... how does adding lines fix the capacity? Its not like Tapu Tapu caused the rides to sit idle at all... its purely capacity and operational issues. There may be some confusion about the system as people aren't used to it, but that isn't resulting in people not getting on the rides. The wait times are the issue, whether you stand on the line in person or virtually.

My understanding is some people waited 2 hours to get into Pandora and 4 hours to ride a single ride... totalling 6 hours for one ride. Not too much better than VB. And you were stuck physically waiting in those 6 hour lines, instead of having to ride the lazy river and go on the wave pool while waiting. Neither are good and fun... but thats opening on a holiday weekend for you. I too won't be going until late this year to either... not worth the wait times that will inevitably die down.

I waited close to 1 hour for Flight of Passage when we got there @ 6:50am yesterday... well worth it for three reasons: epic ride, out of this world queue, & opening weekend would have justified 3 times that.
Honestly still would have been worth it if we waited over twice that long and we never wait in a queue that's over 45 minutes. Heck, we waited more for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train in soft openings.

But a water park that has a measly slide that's over in an instant without an epic queue, and a lifetime of hype? Count me out.

I'll stick to Typhoon Lagoon until crowds a time Volcano Bay die down, and things get fixed.

 

[trr1]

what rides still were not working on opening day besides the 2nd lazy river

 

[Tom Morrow]

I'll admit that my experience with water parks is a lot less than my theme park experience, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around 2+ hour waits for every single slide. I don't think I've ever even waited for more than 30 minutes for a water slide on a busy day. How is this happening?

 

[JT3000]

My understanding is some people waited 2 hours to get into Pandora and 4 hours to ride a single ride... totalling 6 hours for one ride. Not too much better than VB. And you were stuck physically waiting in those 6 hour lines, instead of having to ride the lazy river and go on the wave pool while waiting. Neither are good and fun... but thats opening on a holiday weekend for you. I too won't be going until late this year to either... not worth the wait times that will inevitably die down.

I'm one of those poor schmucks who waited 4 hours for FOP in 95 degree weather. I would've loved a wave pool. Actually, I would've settled for a kiddie pool & a hose.

But a water park that has a measly slide that's over in an instant without an epic queue, and a lifetime of hype? Count me out.

Pretty sure it has more than "a measly slide." I'm sure someone would be willing to provide you with a full list of attractions.

 

[flynnibus]

That's fine and all but I'd be pretty upset to have to kill 5 hours in the wave pool or lazy river when I dropped $70 to hopefully ride some water slides.

The story sounds aweful when you have it wrong... like the other poster I replied to as well. People aren't waiting 5hrs for any ride... just the main coaster. And you still have the slide tier while waiting for the coaster.

 

[UCF]

I waited close to 1 hour for Flight of Passage when we got there @ 6:50am yesterday... well worth it for three reasons: epic ride, out of this world queue, & opening weekend would have justified 3 times that.

At VB, if you arrived early and got in right at opening, the wait times weren't so bad, and there were some slides with no wait time for a period. And while you say you were willing to wait 3x as long as your 1 hour wait, the actual wait times were 6x as long later in the day... long enough that you say you wouldn't be willing to wait at Disney.

You're blaming VB for being a failure in that the park was over capacity because of the hype leading to huge wait times. Then you're commending Disney for Pandora filling to capacity and having huge wait times...

 

[spacemt354]

You're blaming VB for being a failure in that the park was over capacity because of the hype leading to huge wait times. Then you're commending Disney for Pandora filling to capacity and having huge wait times...

One is a theme park, the other is a water park. The comparison between Pandora and Volcano Bay is apples and oranges.

Me personally, waiting for theme park rides, 1-1.5 hours tops. Water park rides, 20-30 mins tops. Everyone is different but most people in my experience would be willing to wait longer for a theme park attraction than a water park attraction for a variety of reasons.