|
Wow - I guess I get the honors of doing the first review on Wonderworks @ BATB. For starters, I'll do my usual thing and apologize for being a very infrequent visitor/contributor to this board. A bit of background: my hubby & I live in Central NC with our almost 10 year-old daughter and we also own a small place in Barefoot Resort. We are here for several weeks this summer and I’ll try to post on anything interesting that we might do (we are both telecommuting for part of our stay and our daughter is doing some summer camps so not a total vacation).
We decided to visit Wonderworks last Wednesday on a bit of a whim - thought the daughter wanted to do the Pavillion rides (has a season pass) but she changed her mind. I’ll start off by saying that I would NOT recommend Wonderworks during the busy season. It doesn’t seem to be well thought-out or designed to handle larger crowds. There are several “choke points” where lines for an attraction make it difficult to move through the space and the lines for the more exciting attractions can be VERY long. We waited about an hour and a half for the first big thing – I think it was called 360 something. It’s basically two sets of two-person bicycles, each on a pendulum. So the idea is that if you pedal hard/fast enough, you can swing it over the top, upside down and all the way around. The entire time we were in the line though, we only ever saw one bike go over (the one on the left side as you’re looking at it). I can’t believe this was because of the riders (since we saw MANY of them riding while we waited in line), so honestly I think something was wrong with the other bike that kept it from going over. Imagine how disappointed you’d be if you waited in line for 90 minutes, only to end up on the “wrong” bike… At any rate, overall we did think Wonderworks was a lot of fun and would be worth the money when it was less crowded, but we definitely spent a LOT more time waiting in lines than we did participating. Our daughter really did enjoy everything here and we probably will go back, but off-season.
Here are a few other notes I had:
Everything near the bubble area gets VERY slippery! The stairs, the bathrooms, and other nearby attractions (one of which is kind of a dancing thing, so we really had to watch our daughter closely on that one so she didn't take a big fall).
They definitely have set this place up to have you go through it from top to bottom. Once you hit the ropes course on the top floor, they expect you to exit (not that anything we saw tells you this) and it’s not at all clear how you can get back to the other attractions from there (hint: follow the signs for strollers/wheelchairs).
My two enjoyed the ropes course a lot, but they were given a 20 minute timer & once it goes off you are supposed to exit the course. They didn’t even get through the whole course in 20 minutes. Also, they mark your ticket and/or your hand when you get on the course, so I guess that’s saying they only want you to go through it once (again, nothing told us this). For the money you pay, I think you should be able to go thru as often as you want, as long as you're willing go back & wait in the line each time (maybe this is different when it’s less crowded and I do understand them limiting the time you can spend on the course).
We wanted to buy a combo ticket for Wonderworks + outdoor ropes course + zipline for our daughter, but they told us you had to weigh 90 lbs. to do the zipline & she’s not even close to that. Maybe next year.
|
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
