Aquatica: Cool new water park

The big news in Orlando is Aquatica, the water park opened in March by SeaWorld (and located just across the street.) Aquatica mixes water slides, lazy rivers, falls, wave pools, a wet jungle-gym type area for little kids -- and animal interactions. There's nothing else quite like it, and mom Deborah Poppe from Long Island rated it the best attraction in Orlando for her kids, ages 4 and 5. "It's amazing,'' she said.


Teens, families and young adults all rated the park as a A-plus -- all except one mom, who came up to the park operations manager while we were talking about complained that she'd be searching for 30 minutes and couldn't find a place to sit with her baby and two other children. Aquatica is on the case, said operations manager Bryan Nadreau. He's already added 1,000 chairs since the park opened, and another 500 are on order.

Park officials say the signature attraction is Dolphin Plunge, which allows riders to zip through a tube atop a wooden tower down 250 feet of clear tubes that run through the habitat of four Commerson's dolphins. Lines were long, lasting about 45 minutes. But a few riders we spoke with thought it wasn't worth the wait. "I couldn't see anything,'' said Erin Cottet of Orlando. But the rest of the park got a big thumbs up.