When Volcano Bay first opened, I heard mixed reviews. People raved about the amazing rides and sights of the park but complained about the Tapu Tapu (virtual queue line) system. My husband and I recently used this system for this first time. A little over two years after the opening, is the Tapu Tapu still causing some of the same frustrations and delays?
How does it work?
For those unfamiliar with the concept, every guest receives this wearable, watch-like virtual line totem upon entry to the park. To begin waiting in an attraction queue, you need to physically go to the entrance of that ride, tap the console, and your Tapu Tapu will show your wait time on its screen. While you wait, you can eat, explore the park, or ride selected attractions. Some of these attractions (such as the wave pool) are marked as “Enjoy Anytime.” There is no wait or Tapu Tapu necessary for these experiences. Other times, rides that may use Tapu Tapu during a long wait happen to have very little to no wait. When this occurs, the wait time will show as “Ride Now.” Attractions with this wait time can be enjoyed by anyone, whether or not you are already in a Tapu Tapu queue. You will not lose your place in line at your selected attraction while you enjoy a “Ride Now” experience. But, you can only use the Tapu Tapu to hold one place in line at one attraction.
Your Tapu Tapu is not only used for virtual queues. You can also use it to pay for merchandise, food, and drinks. It can be linked to your locker so that all you need to do is tap to open it. Finally, throughout the park are “buttons” with the Volcano Bay logo on them. Tapping these logos with your Tapu Tapu will cause some sort of whimsical effect like shooting water or a light display.
Entrance
Waiting to scan your ticket and receive your Tapu Tapu does seem to take an unnecessarily long time. I go to theme parks a lot. I know how long it should take to scan a ticket and enter through a turnstile, but it felt like I was waiting behind just a few people for forever. When I got closer, I realized that the extra time was added to distribute the Tapu Tapu and possibly answer a few questions. My husband wanted to link our Tapu Tapus to our credit card right away so that we could take advantage of the payment option. He asked the gate attendant and was told that the wearable was automatically connected to our Universal Orlando iPhone application. As we had not done anything to link these, we were skeptical that this was the correct answer. We asked another gate attendant who told us that we needed to manually add our ticket into our app. As long as we have a credit card loaded into the Universal app as well, the Tapu Tapu could be used for payment using that credit card. That made a lot more sense. We didn’t have any further issues with payment.
Lockers
Due to a lack of signage, it was difficult to locate the locker area. When we finally found it, we approached one of the automated machines and attempted to “tap” it with our wearable. We had to use three different machines before one would read our Tapu Tapu and complete the transaction. Once we rented the locker, however, we easily followed the posted instructions to link a second band. We did not have any other issues with the locker during the day.
Our First Virtual Queue
Immediately after renting our locker, we proceeded to the Krakatau Aqua Coaster to get a place in line. We tapped the console at the entrance to learn we had 130 minute wait. While we waited for our time, we swam in the wave pool, rode Punga Racers and the Taniwha tube slides (as these were posted as “Ride Now”), enjoyed TeAwa (the Fearless River), and ate lunch. While our actual wait was about 20 minutes longer than the posted time, it certainly didn’t feel like we were waiting in line. However, once our wait was over and our Tapu Tapu notified us it was time to return to the coaster, we realized we didn’t know if we were required to be right on time or if there was a grace period. If there was a grace period, we had no idea how long that would be, and we still needed to return to our locker on the way to the attraction.
When we arrived we found out that after you have waited in your virtual queue, you are free to return to the ride whenever you wish. You can ride immediately. You can finish your lunch, or you can wait until you’ve finished your loop around the lazy river to return. Once your turn is up, it won’t disappear. When you do decide to return to your chosen attraction, you might find a small wait. We only waited behind one or two parties before it was our turn to board.
Our Second and Third Virtual Queue
After riding Kraktau (Wow! What an amazing aqua coaster!), our experience with the Tapu Tapu got a little more complicated. We asked if we could start waiting in another queue before riding the attraction for which we had just completed the wait. We were told that we could do this, so we hurried over to Puihi Round Raft rides and tapped to enter the queue. It was only posted at a 10 minute wait, so we went to the Ohyah drop slide kiosk and just waited. Our strategy was to wait until our Puihi queue was done, tap for Ohyah, and then ride Puihi while we started the 65 minute wait. We waited around for several minutes before the queue was completed. I tried to tap for Ohyah and was disappointed to realize that we had been misinformed. I would have to give up my “ready to ride” status to get a place in another line. So, with that time wasted, we went back to Puihi and rode the slide before returning to Ohyah to tap for what was now an 85 minute wait.
It was getting harder to stay entertained during the wait as we had already enjoyed most of the always available attractions. We had not tried the Kapiko Wai Winding River yet, so we did two loops around that attraction before returning to the wave pool and TeAwa. As we were walking around the park, we noticed some of the slides had very low posted wait times (15 minutes), but they were not posting as “Ride Now.” This was the first time that I really felt like I was waiting in line. There were attractions that seemed easily accessible and relatively few people were trying to enjoy – but I couldn’t ride them because I was waiting of Ohyah Drop Slide. When our wait was completed, we walked to Ohyah and entered the queue. Once again, we didn’t have to wait behind more than a few people before riding.
Immediately after exiting this slide, all attractions were shut down due to lightning in the area. We waited for almost an hour and a half for them to reopen before we finally had to leave in order to enjoy dinner at a reasonable hour.
My Tapu Tapu Review
I’ll start with the positives. Tapu Tapu really did let me feel like I spent the whole day playing and no time standing in line. It was awesome to guarantee that I would see my highest priority attraction while still being able to explore the park, eat lunch, and enjoy a few slides. By using the Tapu Tapu, we were able to significantly increase the quantity of attractions and rides we experienced during our day.
During the day, I did have a few frustrations with the system. Having to walk to the entrance of the ride to tap and hold your place in line felt clumsy and time consuming, especially when you’re used to booking virtual queues on centralized kiosks or your phone. Additionally, the wait times were longer than posted, but this could have been due to delays. Finally, when you decide to enjoy a ride that is posted as “Ride Now” you still need to tap so you’re screen is taken over by a message from that ride. It takes a little bit for this screen to clear and to see your wait time for your chosen attraction again. I had not expected this, and it caused some confusion as I was worried I had lost my place in line for Krakatau.
Overall, I think the best way to make the most of Tapu Tapu is to recognize it for what it is. This is not a way to maximize your day. It’s simply a virtual line placeholder. It’s exactly the same as if you were physically standing in all of these lines, you’re just not actually standing there. This is why it’s designed to require you to go to the entrance of the ride and why you can’t hold two places in line at the same time. Anything you wouldn’t be able to physically do according to queue lines, you also can’t do with Tapu Tapu. If you’re looking to maximize your day and more efficiently experience all of the attractions, you can purchase the Express Pass just like in the regular parks.
As virtual line systems continue to improve, I look forward to seeing them more widely incorporated in traditional theme parks. Not only because it will improve the guest experience to decrease their time actually spent standing in line, but because it would require theme parks to create more immersive and entertaining environments to accommodate all of the people waiting in virtual queues. Maybe Epic Universe will be the first major theme park to completely utilize virtual queue lines!
Special Tips
- If a ride is posted at a 10 minute wait or lower, don’t tap it. Wait for a few minutes to see if it fluctuates up or down. It’s very possible that a 10 minute wait could turn into “Ride Now” at any moment.
- If you can, stay in the park if attractions close due to lightning. The probability in Florida is that the lightning will leave the area within a couple hours. Many people left the park while it was storming. Even though we were on our way out, we saw the attractions reopen with dramatically shorter wait times than before the storm!
