Here's the line-up of attractions at Aquatica San Diego:
Slides:
Other attractions:
A single-day Aquatica ticket is $38 ($30 for kids) online at the Aquatica website. A two-day combo ticket for SeaWorld San Diego and Aquatica is $96 for adults and $88 for children 3-9, also on the website.
How popular will this new park be? The Orlando Aquatica is the nation's third most-popular water park (behind the two Walt Disney World water parks), according to the TEA/AECOM Global Attractions Attendance Report. But with 1.5 million visitors a year, Aquatica lags its sister park, SeaWorld Orlando, which drew 5.2 million visitors in 2011 (the latest year for which data is available.)
Even the most popular water park in the world, Disney's Typhoon Lagoon, at just more than 2 million visitors a year, wouldn't crack the Top 20 for attendance among North American theme parks. But parks can build a world-class waterslide attraction for an order of magnitude less money than a world-class roller coaster would cost. So while water parks attract fewer visitors than traditional theme parks, their lower costs can make them highly profitable.
So the San Diego Aquatica doesn't need to draw SeaWorld San Diego's 4.3 million visitors a year to be a financial success for SeaWorld. But will it be a hit with visitors?
We typically don't cover water parks here on Theme Park Insider (see those attendance numbers above for the reason). But many theme parks offer water parks as part of their entertainment experience. Sometimes, they're included in the cost of a theme park ticket, such as at the popular Holiday World and Splashin' Safari in Indiana. More often, the water park requires an extra admission, though discounted theme park/water park combo tickets are readily available, as with SeaWorld and Aquatica. And, of course, many top water parks aren't affiliated with any theme park, such as the Schlitterbahn water parks in Texas.
What's your take on water parks? Do you usually make a water park part of a theme park visit? Do you visit water parks on their own? Or do you skip water parks in favor of other vacation and entertainment alternatives? That's our vote of the week.
Let's talk water parks, in the comments. And, as always, thank you for reading and being a part of Theme Park Insider!
I do love really well-themed water parks like Orlando's Aquatica, HP's Boardwalk and Typhoon Lagoon.
'Course, I guess I might float.
And the blonde in the accompanying photo is rather cute.
Some of the other rides are slow and it was a bit of a train wreck seeing the life guards try and load people onto slides. (It was painfully slow with horrible procedures in place.
Example, for Kiwi Curl; they had a chain link that they had to unhook to let new riders into the loading area. Each slide was setup so that two people could be in loading and then go one at a time. The life guard would only call 3 people in at a time (instead of 6, which is what the ride supported) wait until they all were in position and then dismiss them all at once. The ride was built for more capacity and it even has a Red/Green Light system to queue tubers when to go. (But they weren't using it)
Here are some photos showing off the beautiful refurbishment.
Click Here
Here are videos of the slides as well.
Click Here
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