Universal Orlando's Volcano Bay water theme park will close for the season on November 2, the resort announced today.
Universal said that Volcano Bay has "a current planned reopening timeframe of on or before March 1" 2021. The resort also said that "we will use the seasonal closure to conduct annual maintenance on several attractions and areas of the park at the same time."
Since Volcano Bay opened in May 2017, it has operated year-round. Earlier this year, Universal announced that Volcano Bay would close on select days each week, as tourism continues to suffer during the pandemic. However, the Walt Disney World Resort also recently announced that it would keep its water parks closed until next year, so today's announcement from Universal effectively matches that.
Universal Orlando said that it will work with people who have bought tickets to the park as well as annual passholders whose passes included Volcano Bay. More details will be announced, or guests can call Universal's guest services at +1-877-801-9720.
And for team members, this means another round of furloughs, as Volcano Bay workers not assigned to the refurb or other jobs around the resort are put on leave.
TweetI wondered about coming this yesterday, when Universal's announcement about extending its three-days-free deal made no mention of Volcano Bay. But yes, refunds or pass extensions are in order.
I know that weather is iffy during these four months for water parks in Orlando, but on days when the temps are up and the skies clear, it was nice to have that option available when visiting. Right now, though, no one's margins are fat enough to keep something like this open as a "maybe option" like that. Water parks in Orlando might be a seasonal thing for the next few years, I'm afraid, as we wait to see how swiftly the travel industry recovers.
I think right on water parks seasonal. I do recall back in '90s when Orlando could have chilly winters, that's not as common now but still obvious how hard it is to handle that.
Ironically, in Illinois, Six Flags Great America closed but the Hurricane Harbor was open from June to just this past week...
Their closures seem very arbitrary but I understand it. I finally just had the chance to go to Volcano Bay and they could use quite a bit of work operationally. I didn't have a particularly great experience there and it was very much due to repeated communications failures between the parks various departments.
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Not surprising, but disappointing. Hopefully guests that were planning trips over the winter months and bought/planned an extra day to spend at Volcano Bay are made whole.