Part of Universal’s guiding philosophy behind designing Volcano Bay was to eliminate many of the problems that guests have with standard water parks. (Don’t worry – when you leave the water park for the day and return your TapuTapu, Universal will automatically unlink all of your personal information.) TapTu Playįront of a locker at Universal’s Volcano Bay Lastly, users will need to create – if desired – a PIN that everyone will enter when using TapTu Pay, just as an extra security precaution. Then, by clicking on the wallet icon, they can enter their credit card (and PIN, if necessary) number and also link their travel party’s Volcano Bay tickets (by scanning their barcodes or entering the numbers in manually).
How? First, guests will need to either download the Official Universal Orlando Resort app on their smart phones or create an account at Universal’s main site (you can do that here).
Even better, users will be able to set, and then keep tabs on, spending limits for each individual member of their party. Guests will be able to make all in-park purchases by simply tapping their TapuTapu, thereby allowing them to leave their wallets behind for the day.
That means your TapuTapu will issue you a return ride time of 45 minutes – 35 spent in the park at large, doing whatever it is that you’d like, and then 10 actually, physically standing in line at the slide.įinally, we should probably also note here that guests will have the ability to book and then modify their Virtual Line reservations from within the comfort of their cabanas, should they choose to rent one. Let’s also say that there are so many people in the Virtual Line ahead of you, it’ll take 35 minutes to process all of them. Now, Universal ideally wants to keep this time in a real line as minimal as possible – preferably five minutes, though we’ll say 10 for the sake of this explanation. This means that you’re never left in the dark about what’s going on in the water park, generally, or the next slide you’re going on, specifically.Īnd just how, exactly, does this wait time work? It goes a little something like this: although the vast majority of your wait will be spent not standing in a queue, there will be a small actual line once you actually arrive at the attraction. Even better, your wearable will also adjust your return ride time should the situation on the ground change, either going up or (hopefully!) down in real time. What’s more, should the ride that you’re waiting for go down (due to, say, a technical difficulty or weather-related issue), your TapuTapu will notify you – and then tell you once it’s back up and running. Guests are allowed to register their spot in a Virtual Line for just one attraction at a time if you were to tap your TapuTapu at another slide’s totem, you would erase your previous reservation for the previous ride and make this whole new one – although, should you pass a slide that has no Virtual Line wait (it’ll say “ride now”), you are welcome to quickly hop on that one without at all affecting whatever return times you may have already registered. It’s worth us taking just a moment to get a little more in-depth with this feature, since it is the very foundation of the entire Volcano Bay experience. When it’s time to hop on, your wristband will vibrate and notify you. All rides at Universal’s Volcano Bay will have a Virtual Line – in other words, guests will enter the queue for whichever attraction they’d like to ride by tapping their wristband against a totem outside that particular slide.
The most prominently advertised use for TapuTapu is, by far, to reserve your place in line for attractions, a function which is officially called TapTu Ride. A TapTu Ride point at Universal’s Volcano Bay