SeaWorld’s Aquatica ramps up Riptide Race ride for ’20
Passengers aboard Riptide Race, Aquatica’s next water slide, will see themselves coming and going. The dueling raft ride at SeaWorld’s water park is set to open sometime in the spring of 2020.
The attraction’s design features two tubes that sometimes run parallel to one another and sometimes curve around to run in opposite directions. There are stretches — identified by bright green coloring — with cutouts through which riders can see the rides sliding by.
“The two riders in each of the two slides are only separated by a single divider, so you get the perspective of racing the two next to you as you go down the slide,” said David Heaton, Aquatica’s vice president, during a recent hard-hat tour of the construction area.
He said that feature was the first of its kind in Florida.
The new attraction’s tower tops out at 68 feet, the second highest in the water park, trailing Ihu’s Breakaway Falls, a bottom-drops-out attraction with a 76-foot-tall tower.
“Because this is such a tight footprint, the tower had to be tall to give us the space we need,” Heaton said. Each of the slides is 650 feet long.
“This is a very serpentine attraction. There are a lot of twists and turns throughout this ride, which will really add to the excitement and thrill of the attraction overall,” he said.
Visitors will be paired in two-seater rafts, although a rider can go solo. Riptide Race’s height requirement is 42 inches.
Riptide Race is going up in a space between Ray Rush, which opened in 2018, and the Banana Beach Cook-out restaurant. Some of the eatery’s outdoor seating has gone away to make room for the new project, but diners still will be able to sit outside near the slide’s splashdown area. (No slide was removed to accommodate the addition of Riptide Race.)
Last year, Aquatica added a slide called KareKare Curl.
“We’re really making good use of space,” said Brian Andrelczyk, vice president of design and engineering. “I said it’s just like building on a postage stamp because we’re really stacking things.”
That includes the pumps and filtration systems for the slides.
“It’s a really complex system and way more than just the fiberglass and you see up top,” he said. “There’s a lot of underground utilities involved in the project as well.”
The depth of water at the splash-down area is between 12 and 18 inches.
“It’s a little bit shallower,” Andrelczyk said. “You can get out of the raft easily, step up out of the space. It’s a lot simpler and easier to work with from a guest standpoint and for our water-safety team.”