Volcano Bay - why the bad reviews?

[act1980]

We went in April. While the park looks very nice the rides kept breaking down. Never experienced that in all the years Ive been visiting BB & TL. We also found that there was a total lack of organisation within restaurants & staff were quite rude. Lets just say I won't be rushing to go back!

[elmspenguin]

We went a couple of times last August and loved it but we had early entry at 730am so we got every thing done (had 3 goes on krakatoa each time) bar a couple of slides before it opened at 9am and then used tapu tapu for the ones we had left to do. We left both days around 1130-1200 and it was very busy and I certainly wouldn't want to be going in then.

If you are staying at one of the hotels take advantage of the early entry and you will get most if not everything done, if it is 730 opening get there about 7-710 and go in your swimming costumes to save time.

[wez]

I went in March & loved it! But the morning was really overcast so it didn’t get busy til the afternoon. Rode everything & left about 3pm. It did start to get busy once the cloud cleared at about 1ish.

[Fatboyslick]

Originally Posted by gjdjud

Sorry to hijack but Volcano Bay is taking a lot of my thoughts after reading negative things but I noticed they now have express passes. Do these have a separate line or do you just walk straight in with others that are riding now?

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Id like to know this please as Im planning on using it as I dont want to spend all day at the Park

[CuriousAlice]

We went the other day. For me, positives were that the park is extremely well themed, staff were super friendly and the food was pretty good for a theme park. Negatives were I thought wayfinding was difficult (paper maps just dont work with water and there arent many directional signs), the locker system was expensive and confusing and there wasnt much shade at all.

The Tapu worked ok even though the place was really busy. The main 'volcano' rides had v long wait times. We used our Tapu to queue for the krakatau coaster and while waiting we found a few 'ride now' options by keeping an eye on the notice boards. (You can use no wait slides without affecting your virtual queue but you need to be quick as the waits change fast). We also enjoyed the lazy and fast river - I lost my sunglasses in the fast one but Universal have divers who spend time looking for lost belongings so I got them back from guest services at the gate when we left.

Overall, I thought it was genrerally on a par with the other water parks and we would go back. Just with higher factor sunscreen and a better grip of my sunglasses next time.

[ConnorD]

I was there just a few days ago. The beach appeared to lack some umbrellas, and wait time for the aquacoaster was around 80 minutes (midday), other than that then the other rides were walk on and I got quite a bit done. We arrived just after 11am and left around 2.30pm.

As the above user mentioned, it is quite hard to navigate around the park (especially without using a map). I also lost something in the fast water, my Tapu Tapu. The river seems to dip deeper and then shallower repeatedly at some point.

[sweetchunks]

We loved it, went twice a couple of weeks ago. We were staying off site and got there for park opening. Everything was a ride now. We just kept an eye on the wait time board and tapped in for a return time once slides started getting a wait. It worked really well for us. We left around 2pm both times and the waits had gone up quite a bit by then.
I agree with the post above about loosing things in the rapids river, our was a tapu tapu both time although it was easy to replace at guest services.
I definitely think the tip is get there early and you won’t have much of a wait.

[Joelin]

We’re just back and visited Volcano Bay twice and it was the highlight of our trip.

We used the busy day guide,went early in the morning and only used our Tapu Tapu for the aquacoaster and went on everything else,ride now.

We would have went for the fearless river alone,so much fun (better than the rapids at Aquatica),the kids would have spent all day in it.

We’ve did Typoon Lagoon,Blizzard Beach,Aquatica,Wet “n” Wild (when it was open) and Volcano Bay is our favourite,so many big thrill slides.

[Andybear]

Originally Posted by duchy

TripAdvisor reviews are very subjective , they re useful to identify specific trends at a hotel or attraction but shouldn't be read in isolation .

Some people do moan about some very random things though ...

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That's so true. I remember reading reviews about the Harry Potter tour in Leavesden some time ago. An American lady only gave it one star because they wouldn't let her pay with dollars in the gift shop!

[tracey1302]

I'll be interested to see how busy it is at the moment as we go this time next year.

We will be staying on site and I (perhaps foolishly) was thinking we'd go on the 4th July... am I crazy?