With Florida and Texas Melting during the Summer…. I was thinking how the water parks might want to change their hours.
Summer hours could be changed to night – Open at 8:00 PM and close at 8:00 AM. Maybe Offer a Breakfast menu.
Imagine riding the waves all night and not have to worry about the Sun or the Ultra Hot pavement.
This might be the Future.
Actually LED lights are very cheap to operate.
But have you ever gone in a water park in the Florida summer Sun, it burns you quickly, your feet are on fire if you don't have water shoes. I have gone to water parks in May and I was melting. (Yes I am from the North East but still)
Kids will stay up to go to a water park on vacation... Sure they will. Not infants but 8 and 10 year old's would Love it..
Believe me I act like a 10 year old according to my wife. So I would know.
hahahahahaaha
When I worked at Wet 'n Wild in the late '90's, during the summer we were open until 11:00 pm. (The promotion was called Summer Nights.) We had a live band on the wave pool deck every night, there was a little dance club on the side of the large snack bar, nightly beach volleyball tournaments, etc.. What happened was the tourists left at 8:00 or 9:00, and the park was filled with high school aged kids that didn't spend money on expensive food and really didn't visit the gift shop. It was a nice/fun thing for the locals, but tourists didn't really partake. What we found was, no matter how early we opened, the tourists were there at the opening because (as Russell pointed out) people equate waterparks with the sun and a way to beat the heat. Swimming back at your "base" hotel is different from needing to travel back to a hotel, eat, shower, etc.. Plus, have you ever pulled an all nighter? Have you ever tried to get children back onto their regular schedule after staying up at the MK until midnight? Can you imagine how exhausted kids would be (and how much it would screw up the rest of your vacation), if you had kids stay up all night!?!? Families would have to sleep an entire day and "waste" a vacation day.
Volcano Bay would look amazing at night!
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I don't really see the advantage there. Waterparks exist to cool people off, so you want to visit them when temperatures are high and the sun is bright, not in the middle of the night. Also, most waterparks don't have sufficient lighting to operate exclusively in the dark - most have some lighting in pools and on main pathways, but it would be costly not only to install additional lighting around the parks (not only for guests, but for lifeguards to be able to watch over guests on attractions), but the costs to operate lighting around a massive waterpark.
I wouldn't mind more regular theme parks extending hours into the night (maybe to 10 or 11 PM on Fridays and Saturdays), and perhaps hosting late night events during the heat of the summer, but I just don't think guests, particularly families with small children, are going to shift their daily routine to be active from 8 PM to 8 AM.