I'm trying to decide whether or not to plan VB this year. Trip dates - 7/31 - 8/8, staying at HRH. My boys 12,15 like water parks in general. They LOVE the wave pool at typoon lagoon.
My family did one day at VB last year in mid August. If I am remembering correctly, I woke up at 530am, the kids at 6am in order to be at the bus stop at the recommended 620am time (for the 630am bus). The bus didn't arrive until 650. I don't remember what time early entry was. I guess 730 or 8am. It was a difficult day for us. My 15 yr old had a fractured foot -- so we had a wheel chair, crutches and a boot. And some sort of temporary cast that could get wet. Doctor said he could do slides until his foot hurt...which was 2 slides! There were two slides that had elevators, but one was down, leaving Krakatoa as the only elevator ride available. We did the tapu thing for it...but honestly, that was awful. The elevator leaves you off in the middle of an existing line with no way to get to the back of the line and no staff member to assist you. We had to wait for a kind family to let us in the line. It was awkward and it made my son feel bad for line cutting. Even with the return time, it took about 30 minutes.
Anyway -- by 11am, we left. We had been up since dawn. The kids without foot problems did 5 slides during the early entry period. As soon as the park opened we used the tapu thing to get 1000 return time for krakatau. They did the fast river...but they were not convinced that they were actually in the fast river as opposed to the lazy river. When we got off the krakatau slide, the earliest time we could get for another slide was 1pm. They wandered over to the wave pool, which wasn't doing anything, so they called it quits.
Bottom line was, were we exhausted by 11am (mostly from pushing the 15 yr old year up that awful ramp at the park entry) and felt like we didn't actually do much in that time. I know that in part our feelings about the park were influenced by the difficulty of managing the wheelchair etc.
So.... are the wait times any more manageable at VB? Was it just new park growing pains, or should I expect the same kind of day this year? (hopefully minus the foot issues).
Maybe one other thing to consider is that we are heading to Discovery Cove after the Universal part of the vacation. We plan Discovery Cove one day, Sea World 2 days and Aquatica water park with quick queue passes for two days.