Florida Water Parks

If the beach is not enough, then there are also a number of water parks in Florida offering everything from wave pools, water slides and chutes to swimming with sharks or dolphins.

One of the earliest water parks is Wet 'n Wild in Orlando which opened in 1977. It has a number of traditional water slides and chutes.

Today, Florida has 5 of the 7 top spots for most visited water parks in North America (i.e. including Canada) according to TEA/ERA in their annual Theme Park Attendance Reports. Figures show estimated 2008 numbers (with 2007 numbers in brackets):

Disney have built two landscaped water parks in Orlando, firstly Typhoon Lagoon which is based around a tropical island lagoon and provides an enormous wave pool simulating the surf on a beach and also offers an opportunity to swim over a tropical reef inhabited by (harmless!) nurse sharks. They then created Blizzard Beach which is bizarrely modelled on a ski resort. This park is more for the thrill seeker with impressive water chutes.

Following on from the success of SeaWorld Orlando, Busch Entertainment then created an exclusive water park across the road called Discovery Cove where you can laze on an artificial beach, swim with tropical reef fish and stingrays or interact with dolphins.

They then built a second water park, Aquatica which opened in April 2008 and is similar to the two Disney water parks.

In recent years, Cypress Gardens added a water park to their botanical gardens, zoo and theme park rides though it closed in 2009. It is possible it will re-open as part of the new Legoland Florida theme park.

Today there are a number of water parks in Florida (those marked with an asterisk are only open during the Spring/Summer months):

Disney's Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon close for just a couple of months for maintenance during the winter though Disney stagger the closing times to ensure that one park remains open.

See also:- Buying Theme Park Tickets