How much time is enough time for each water park?

MaC410

DIS Veteran
Joined
Apr 29, 2015
I know there isn't ever a definitive answer for these types of questions but I'm just looking for some personal opinions based on experiences. We have never been to the water parks and are looking to go to both on our next trip. We have no idea what the water parks are actually like. Are there very long lines? Are they full day or half day experiences? Our plan without much info yet is to not spend the whole day at either of the water parks. We would rather spend half a day or maybe even less at each one.

How much time do you usually spend at each water park?
 
Probably a half day. Typhoon lagoon has a bit more rides than Blizzard Beach. You want to be there before the 10am park opens. Go claim your spot around the main wave pool and then hit the rides. After you do the rides, do the wave pool and or lazy river. Blizzard Beach’s wave pool is a steady low wave bob. Typhoon Lagoon’s is more like the ocean.
 
Last year we did a "one and done" trip to WDW, and so we tried to cram everything into our 7 days, including both of the water parks. It was myself, DH, and our 13-year-old twins.

We combined a half-day at Blizzard Beach with a half-day at DHS. It worked pretty well, but we did feel rushed at Blizzard Beach. We could have easily spent another 2 or 3 hours there. We were staying at the Polynesian, and didn't get the earliest start (this was day 3 for us, and we were already dragging after our first 2 very long Disney days which included After Hours at Animal Kingdom and evening EMH at Epcot!), but a quick Uber down to Blizzard Beach got us there right at 10 am open. We could have benefited from getting there 15 minutes earlier at least! But even so, we found a place for our stuff easily, and for the first hour or so had pretty short lines. I will say that we experienced probably the longest line of our trip at Blizzard Beach - 45 minutes for a ride where you have to pick up inner tubes before you go up (Downhill Double Dipper?). That ride didn't feel worth that long of a wait (and the wait was posted at 20 minutes but was a lot longer)! We had a 2:45 pm FP+ at DHS, so my cutoff time for Blizzard Beach was 2 pm. Between our late start (it must have been 10:20-10:30 once we'd gotten towels, found a place for our stuff, sunscreened up, got our bearings and figured out which slide to head for first) and 2 pm, we were able to go on each of the slides/tube rides at least once plus some time in the wave pool and lazy river. No time for actual lunch, just some granola bars and cold drinks. Then I had to drag my kids out of the wave pool, and we all did a quick change (not great facilities there, so no actual showers or anything like that), and hopped in an Uber over to DHS. I will say it was very awkward going through security at DHS with our beach bag full of wet swimsuits - even though we had used the complimentary towels at Blizzard Beach we still had a big bundle of wet stuff. The security guy seemed really suspicious of us bringing that bag in, for some reason, and at first seemed like he wasn't going to let us bring it in. We put it straight into a locker near the entrance after security, where it spent a very hot day but was surprisingly not gross when we picked it up at the end of the day (nearly 10 pm after the Star Wars fireworks!). So from getting out of wave pool at 2pm, Uber to DHS, through security and stowing stuff in locker, we were wandering down towards Tower of Terror by about 2:45 pm. Not looking our most stylish in the photos we got that day! And I did regret not really getting to soak in the atmosphere at Blizzard Beach - it felt rushed. But, we did see it and I would have regretted not going at all vs. just having a half day there. So roughly 10 am - 2 pm BB, 3 pm - 9 pm DHS with an hour of transition time.

For Typhoon Lagoon, we did it the other way around - we went to Epcot for the first part of the day, then went to Typhoon Lagoon for the evening. We had tickets for H2O Glow Night at Typhoon Lagoon, so were able to be at Epcot until nearly 4 pm. I'd highly recommend doing the H2O Glow Night if it's offered when you're there! It was one of the best things we did (we did After Hours at Animal Kingdom, After Hours at Magic Kingdom, and H2O Glow Night, and loved them all). Our tickets let us enter Typhoon Lagoon at 6 pm, and we stayed until 11 pm. So we had 5 hours there, and because of the low crowds at the event, we were able to do everything we wanted, many of the slides over and over and over again, plus lots of time in the wave pool and lazy river. You could probably also do Typhoon Lagoon in half a day, but I think you'd definitely feel rushed. It felt like there was more to do there than at Blizzard Beach. Even if there wasn't a late night event offered, you could still try to do theme park morning then Typhoon Lagoon afternoon, something like 4 pm - 8 pm close (but you'd need to check operating hours. The week we were there, late August 2019, the water parks started closing at 6 pm after having been open until 8 pm earlier in the summer).

I do think splitting our days like that allowed us to get in everything we wanted, without having to sacrifice a whole day to water parks - every day of our trip was at least partially a theme park day with FP+ booked, to maximise our pre-booked FP+ over the week. I think we would have had a slightly more relaxing time, though, if we'd allowed for longer at Blizzard Beach - so maybe booked our first DHS FP+ at 4 or 5 pm? But you know, when you're trying to book FP+ you can't always be choosy, so there was an element of going with what we could get!
 


We typically spend 5-6 hours at each. Once lines get long we leave. Both have some fun things to do but we don’t like to wait 30+ minutes for a short water ride. Typhoon Lagoon has swim with sharks so that is fun. Lazy rivers also long and good for lounging.
 
We typically spend 5-6 hours at each. Once lines get long we leave. Both have some fun things to do but we don’t like to wait 30+ minutes for a short water ride. Typhoon Lagoon has swim with sharks so that is fun. Lazy rivers also long and good for lounging.
Pretty sure the swim with the sharks is gone now, replaced with the new family slide.
 
We typically spend most of a day at each water park. I could easily spend all day, but we usually leave to go to a theme park around 3 or 4. The lines tend to die off in the afternoon, too.

We always have our toddler in tow as well.
 


We get hopper plus tickets and we tend to give each water park approx. half a day. And like mentioned above, we like to split a day between a regular park and a water park.

We will do one water park early for opening (We like to plan this for the day after a late evening because the water parks open later than the regular parks giving an extra time to sleep in in the morning. :) ) and then when we're done we go to another park for the late afternoon/evening.

Then another day we'll rope drop a regular park and we start feeling like we need a break, we head to a water park instead of a resort. We'll start off with the lazy river to relax and then hit some rides. :)
 
I know there isn't ever a definitive answer for these types of questions but I'm just looking for some personal opinions based on experiences. We have never been to the water parks and are looking to go to both on our next trip. We have no idea what the water parks are actually like. Are there very long lines? Are they full day or half day experiences? Our plan without much info yet is to not spend the whole day at either of the water parks. We would rather spend half a day or maybe even less at each one.

How much time do you usually spend at each water park?
It depends what time you get to the park.. the earlier you get there.. then the less lines.. we have gotten there right at rope drop and were able to got on most of the slides a few times before it got busy.. I would say lines start to form around 1130ish.
 
It depends what time you get to the park.. the earlier you get there.. then the less lines.. we have gotten there right at rope drop and were able to got on most of the slides a few times before it got busy.. I would say lines start to form around 1130ish.

We definitely plan to get there right at opening.
 
I feel like a half day is good for our family. We could probably stay longer but we aren't the lounging types when we have other things we could be doing.
 
We just spent 6 hours at Blizzard Beach last week. We were mostly just lounging.
We typically spend 5-6 hours at each. Once lines get long we leave. Both have some fun things to do but we don’t like to wait 30+ minutes for a short water ride. Typhoon Lagoon has swim with sharks so that is fun. Lazy rivers also long and good for lounging.

Thanks, this is making me feel better about booking the whole day there. In our case, since the park's only open 10-5 that day, a whole day is about 7 hours.

To the OP, I think a lot of the advice given is also going to depend on what the operating hours are that day.
 
4-6 hours. Waterpark can be pretty exhausting, even more so than the regular parks because of all the stair climbing (with or without tubes) and playing in the water itself. When we go out for the evening after a waterpark day, I always have that tired but refreshed feeling, and tend to sleep like a rock on those nights. Also, bear in mind if you're going during the summer chances are you might get chased out by an afternoon thunderstorm so you'll want to get there near opening time so you get some things done.
 
We went to typhoon lagoon on a rest day and it was perfect. We slept in pretty late and then went. It was in the winter so it wasn't very busy. A half day should be enough.
 
We went to Blizzard Beach last Tuesday from 10-3. We easily could have stayed until closing (5:00), but 3:00 was fine--although we rushed our lunch a tad in order to make FP reservations. (We purposely booked late FPs that day since we planned on spending the early portion of our day at BB.)

We went directly to Animal Kingdom immediately afterwards. By car, I think we got from parking space to parking space in under 5 minutes. I highly recommend that split due to those parks' proximity to one another. Also, BB closed at 5pm, and AK closed at 8pm, so that dictated the order of parks we visited.

I don't think any of us encountered a line of more than about 5 minutes at any water ride, even at midday, so we were able to do everything we wanted multiple times. (It was a sunny, 85-degree day, too.) Guessing if you go on a hot day 4th of july weekend, for example, there will be substantially longer lines, and you may want to stay there longer.

I've heard lots of people say that the water parks tire you out faster than the regular parks. I didn't find that to be the case, although I did make use of the BB ski lift, instead of walking up the big hill, on several occasions.

BTW, we intentionally got park hopper-plus tickets because we knew we were going to go to a water park at least once on our trip.
 
We usually go every summer trip and get to the for park opening and are usually there from 10- 2 or 3 pm (we do each water park on a rest day). I found we were pretty wiped from a day in the sun so didn't do much after except nap or chill at the resort or maybe a later dinner at DS.
 

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