olenygiants
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2012
- Messages
- 51
We were at Volcano Bay last week for the day and wanted to post some thoughts from our day there. NOTE: We did have single ride express passes, stayed onsite so we had early entry, and we had a single family cabana in the river area.
We arrived 30 minutes prior to opening and was one of the first people in the park. Good thing to because we needed to go to the concierge to get our Cabana and express passes. As we were in line, this line grew significantly and it moved at a snails pace. When the guy tried to setup our express pass he had issues with it and seemed pretty clueless as to what to do. He said he would get with a manager. They eventually got it worked out or so we thought. And then they had someone walk us to the cabana. We were greeted at the cabana by our server who went over some things. Do not remember much about what, but it was not very useful. We had to ask her questions about things and there were several things she did not know. The cabana was great and was in a great location. We could see the good side of the volcano, right by the entrance to the drop slides, steps away from the wave pool, right by the bathrooms, and a short distance to the toddler area. We also ordered several things throughout the day and saved a ton of time standing in lines to order stuff.
It took about 30 minutes from the time we entered the park to getting settled in at our cabana which probably is not too bad. The kiosk thing was working in our cabana (this was surprising to the attendant) so we were able to reserve rides from there, as well as, see the status of them and what the current wait was.
Because we had only single-ride express passes we wanted to ride as much as we could. We took off to find some slides. It took a while to figure things out on where to go. Most slides during early entry was "Ride now" so we were just able to ride. We rode a few slides and could see the non-early entry guests lining up to get in. As soon as they were released, the slide lines got wayyy backed up. Several slides still said "ride now" but were 30-40 minute waits standing in lines.
If you have early entry, use it! Go straight into the park and go on the stuff you really want to do first. Because it was a night and day difference on times for the stuff we saw when the park opened to everyone.
After the early hours, we started using our express pass. This really was a life-saver and without it, I would have been very disappointed in visiting this park.
We got to ride pretty much everything we wanted to. There were several slides that were closed most of the day and some coming on and off throughout the day. At one point when we looked at the kiosk thing, it seemed that at least half of everything was closed.
Also, it seemed that the express pass system was not working correctly. I saw the staff's screen when we were using our Tapu Tapu on rides and it rarely read the express pass so they checked a button to manually allow it. Only one staff member asked us to go back to guest services to get it fixed, but he still let us go ahead and ride anyways. Additionally, I am pretty sure we could have rode the same slide multiple times throughout the day using the express pass even though it was single ride only. We never tried this though. There was enough to do that we never really wanted to go back to do anything multiple times except for the drop slides and the first time we did that we walked on during early hours.
At one point we talked to a staff member about the park and its opening. He told us the park had hit capacity every day it was opened. He said if it was sunny then the park hit capacity by 9 or 10am and if it was cloudy or a chance of rain then it may not hit capacity until 1pm.
The slides were a lot of fun, but honestly, there was nothing here waiting for as long as some of the waits we saw. We saw waits up to 5 hours on some of the slides while we were there. I believe the longest wait was for the drop slides.
Our kids played in the toddler area quite a bit. There was clearly some things not working quite right yet, but overall it was a ton of fun and the kids loved it. It was much bigger then I expected and had a lot of slides for the younger ones. And this area never seemed as crowded as several of the others. This was much better then I anticipated.
Several of the Tapu Tapu interactive things were not working. I think I only found one that actually worked.
We stayed at Volcano Bay until around 5pm. It seemed people started clearing out before then as we saw huge decreases in some of the wait times. My guess is that you would be able to do a lot if you could hang around until people start leaving.
After midday, we did not see long lines on many of the slides, but a consistent flow of people riding. It looks like they are improving on the virtual line system (in this respect) based on reviews from before we went. I never saw an empty line with a longer virtual queue.
PROS:
** The cabana was great and well worth the cost in my opinion. If you can get one, I would suggest doing it. Especially if you have younger ones and need a place to take a break.
** The park is really pretty and they made some very clever design choices
** The slides are a lot of fun
** I like the idea of the virtual line queue, but think its going to take some time to get working well.
** The food was really good by theme park standards.
CONS:
** I think capacity is set to high. While they are working the kinks out they should decrease the capacity cap.
** I loved having an express pass, but honestly, I do not think it works well with this park based on how it currently works. With an unlimited express pass I could have rode slides 50 times before the person in the virtual queue could have done it once. Considering they are no longer for sale, I think they realized this
** Stuff being closed or not working. 50% of things not working in a park that is at max capacity should not happen. Yes, stuff happens, but these are waterslides not some high tech piece of machinery using state of the art newly developed technology.
** The park needs something else. Maybe some bands playing, shows, street performers or something. The wave pool is so large it seems they could do something there to keep guests entertained as they wait. This would be an easy way to distract guests.
We had a great experience there and definitely enjoyed our time, but there is a lot of room for improvement here. And a lot of our great experience was due to having an express pass and a cabana. Without those, I believe we would have been very frustrated guests.
We arrived 30 minutes prior to opening and was one of the first people in the park. Good thing to because we needed to go to the concierge to get our Cabana and express passes. As we were in line, this line grew significantly and it moved at a snails pace. When the guy tried to setup our express pass he had issues with it and seemed pretty clueless as to what to do. He said he would get with a manager. They eventually got it worked out or so we thought. And then they had someone walk us to the cabana. We were greeted at the cabana by our server who went over some things. Do not remember much about what, but it was not very useful. We had to ask her questions about things and there were several things she did not know. The cabana was great and was in a great location. We could see the good side of the volcano, right by the entrance to the drop slides, steps away from the wave pool, right by the bathrooms, and a short distance to the toddler area. We also ordered several things throughout the day and saved a ton of time standing in lines to order stuff.
It took about 30 minutes from the time we entered the park to getting settled in at our cabana which probably is not too bad. The kiosk thing was working in our cabana (this was surprising to the attendant) so we were able to reserve rides from there, as well as, see the status of them and what the current wait was.
Because we had only single-ride express passes we wanted to ride as much as we could. We took off to find some slides. It took a while to figure things out on where to go. Most slides during early entry was "Ride now" so we were just able to ride. We rode a few slides and could see the non-early entry guests lining up to get in. As soon as they were released, the slide lines got wayyy backed up. Several slides still said "ride now" but were 30-40 minute waits standing in lines.
If you have early entry, use it! Go straight into the park and go on the stuff you really want to do first. Because it was a night and day difference on times for the stuff we saw when the park opened to everyone.
After the early hours, we started using our express pass. This really was a life-saver and without it, I would have been very disappointed in visiting this park.
We got to ride pretty much everything we wanted to. There were several slides that were closed most of the day and some coming on and off throughout the day. At one point when we looked at the kiosk thing, it seemed that at least half of everything was closed.
Also, it seemed that the express pass system was not working correctly. I saw the staff's screen when we were using our Tapu Tapu on rides and it rarely read the express pass so they checked a button to manually allow it. Only one staff member asked us to go back to guest services to get it fixed, but he still let us go ahead and ride anyways. Additionally, I am pretty sure we could have rode the same slide multiple times throughout the day using the express pass even though it was single ride only. We never tried this though. There was enough to do that we never really wanted to go back to do anything multiple times except for the drop slides and the first time we did that we walked on during early hours.
At one point we talked to a staff member about the park and its opening. He told us the park had hit capacity every day it was opened. He said if it was sunny then the park hit capacity by 9 or 10am and if it was cloudy or a chance of rain then it may not hit capacity until 1pm.
The slides were a lot of fun, but honestly, there was nothing here waiting for as long as some of the waits we saw. We saw waits up to 5 hours on some of the slides while we were there. I believe the longest wait was for the drop slides.
Our kids played in the toddler area quite a bit. There was clearly some things not working quite right yet, but overall it was a ton of fun and the kids loved it. It was much bigger then I expected and had a lot of slides for the younger ones. And this area never seemed as crowded as several of the others. This was much better then I anticipated.
Several of the Tapu Tapu interactive things were not working. I think I only found one that actually worked.
We stayed at Volcano Bay until around 5pm. It seemed people started clearing out before then as we saw huge decreases in some of the wait times. My guess is that you would be able to do a lot if you could hang around until people start leaving.
After midday, we did not see long lines on many of the slides, but a consistent flow of people riding. It looks like they are improving on the virtual line system (in this respect) based on reviews from before we went. I never saw an empty line with a longer virtual queue.
PROS:
** The cabana was great and well worth the cost in my opinion. If you can get one, I would suggest doing it. Especially if you have younger ones and need a place to take a break.
** The park is really pretty and they made some very clever design choices
** The slides are a lot of fun
** I like the idea of the virtual line queue, but think its going to take some time to get working well.
** The food was really good by theme park standards.
CONS:
** I think capacity is set to high. While they are working the kinks out they should decrease the capacity cap.
** I loved having an express pass, but honestly, I do not think it works well with this park based on how it currently works. With an unlimited express pass I could have rode slides 50 times before the person in the virtual queue could have done it once. Considering they are no longer for sale, I think they realized this
** Stuff being closed or not working. 50% of things not working in a park that is at max capacity should not happen. Yes, stuff happens, but these are waterslides not some high tech piece of machinery using state of the art newly developed technology.
** The park needs something else. Maybe some bands playing, shows, street performers or something. The wave pool is so large it seems they could do something there to keep guests entertained as they wait. This would be an easy way to distract guests.
We had a great experience there and definitely enjoyed our time, but there is a lot of room for improvement here. And a lot of our great experience was due to having an express pass and a cabana. Without those, I believe we would have been very frustrated guests.
We are going in late July we booked a cabana and we bought unlimited express pass before they stopped. It sounds like they still have a ways to go but getting better. I agree they need to lower the capacity right now ( I think they are) which could be helping line times. We are staying at Cabana Bay so I will walk over about 30 -45 minutes prior to early entry. I want to get through the concierge as soon as possible. I am going twice that week and the first day I have premium seating in the wave village. I am going to scope out the cabanas in the wave village since that is where I reserved and find the best location one. Since they don't assign them to that day I will request one when it is our day. I have a special needs daughter and when we need that break time I need a certain way.
