Aquatica Review

Last weekend I had the oppurtunity to visit Aquatica, Sea World's Waterpark. I had a lot of fun in the three hours I spent there. My opinion of the park is that what they have is nice, but the park is a bit on the small side. The theming in some places is pretty good and in more then half the park theming is non-existant. With the exception of a few things its a very 'off the shelf' waterpark. Also at $45 (which I think makes it the priciest waterpark in the country) it is not worth the cost. I'm going to give my thoughts on the various sections of the park as I post pictures from them.


First up some shots of the park in general. As you can see they still have some Busch Parks classics like the beer canoe and flowered eagle. The picture of the colorful animals statue, you see things like this all around the park and those characters act as the mascot for Aquatica. The picture of the lady is a character actor they had entertaining guests at the entrance of the park.


Aquatica's biggest attraction is the Dolphin Plunge slide and this part of the park is very well done. The slide itself I enjoyed more then I thought I would, looking at I was thinking this would be one of the super fast claustrophobic 'feel like you drowning' speed slides, but it wasn't, it was a gentle enjoyable slide. I got on this one twice, and while I didn't see any dolphins on my trip thru the shoot I could see the aquarium very well. Another cool thing about the plunge area is you can view the dolphins from two different areas, a traditional aquarium type viewing area on one side, and on the other side you get a great view of the dolphins and the slide from the lazy river, which makes this the coolest area in the park.


This section of the park was a very cool idea, something I haven't seen done before. It was a lazy river with a pair of bowl slides in the middle and the only way to get to the bowl slides was to take a half trip around the lazy river, and then the slides dumped you right back out into the lazy river. This was also the lazy river with the commerson dolphin plunge viewing float past area.


This was your average 'every waterpark has one' four tube slide complex. It was fun, ordinary and didn't ever have a line.


Aquatica has a double wave pool and it's just an ordinary wave pool, no Typhoon Lagoon, but a fun average waterpark wave pool. When I went in there was a duck swimming around in the wave pool with the guests for a while, that was different.


The family tube slide complex. Both sides were pretty fun, but nothing to write home about.


The racing slide was a surprise to me. It was a lot taller then any other one I been on and you really start picking up speed. This was the surprise of the park for me.


Another highlight of Aquatica was this, its a speed up version of a traditional lazy river. Theres no tubes, you can just go in swimming or grab a life vest and float. It may not sound that appealing, but this thing can really book and was a ton of fun to float a few laps in.


I'm gonna finish up my review with the two sections of the park I didn't explore, the two childrens areas. The water playground/fortress was one of the largest I've ever seen.

To sum it up, Aquatica was good not great, small and not worth $45 admission. Highlights were the 2 lazy rivers, racing slide and the dolphin plunge.