Universal's Volcano Bay, Orlando

 

Travel distance/time from Florida Delight (24.8 miles: 33 minutes) 

Universal's Volcano Bay waterpark is a tropical paradise combining thrilling, adrenaline filled rides with peace and relaxation. 

With the clever use of electronic type arm bands there’s no standing in long lines, wrestling with tubes, or waiting for the fun to begin as guests will be alerted when it is their turn to experience the attractions.

The centre piece of the island is Krakatau, a great Fire and Water volcano. It stands at 200 feet above the tropical landscape and streams waterfalls during the day and fiery lava effects at night. Inside the cavernous volcano the Waturi people dare you to brave a variety of heart-pounding water slides. 

We had our first visit to Volcano Bay in mid February 2018, along with my 12 year old nephew, two sons (both in their late twenties) and my sister and her husband. Everyone of us really enjoyed the day and could easily have spent much longer there than we did but we had a bit of a time limit as we were due to go out in the evening.

The volcano is the real centre piece of the park and looks amazing with waterfalls cascading down it as well as a high drop tube slide. 

The electronic arm pad idea is excellent. You can only book onto one ride at a time and when it showed we had about 10 minutes remaining before our booked time we made our way to the ride and at 5 minutes to they would let us on. This idea means that you aren't hanging around queuing for ages and can go off and do another ride in the meantime. 

We also loved the things that you can go onto without a wait such as the rapids and the lazy river (with inner tubes). The best couple of rides for us were the aqua coaster and one with inflatables that all 6 of us went on together. 

The food was surprisingly good, and welcome, as it does make you very hungry spending a few hours running around a water park. We never have high expectations of food being particularly nice in a theme park, but here we all enjoyed our pulled pork sandwiches and fries or burgers.

Unfortunately even if you already have a ticket to get into Volcano Bay you do still have to pay $20 parking and money for a locker of either $16 or $20. Lockers are small and we made sure we took as little as possible with us because we didn't want to pay for more than one locker. 

The only other water park that we have done in Orlando is Aquatica and by comparison, in our opinion, Volcano Bay is by far the best park.