Not one square inch of your body or your clothes will be dry after you get off the aptly named Bilge Rats. But a lot people love Bluto’s Bilge Rat Barges for the same reason I despise it: You will get 100% wet. If I’m being honest, I have to admit I hate this ride with all my heart. Spectators trigger submerged water cannons that riders try to avoid.Ģ1) Popeye and Bluto’s Bilge Rat Barges is a nicely themed river rapids ride at Florida’s Islands of Adventure theme park that’s guaranteed to get you wet. With a final splashdown into the lake, the classic ride is one of the last remaining mill chutes left in the world and the oldest attraction of its type still in operation in the United States, according to the National Amusement Park Historical Assn.Ģ2) The Aquazone Wave Racers at Legoland parks in California and Florida cleverly combine a water carousel with a stand-up jet ski that skips over waves on a man-made lagoon. The original Disneyland ride was unfinished on opening day in 1955 with little more than signs bearing the Latin terms for weeds lining the muddy banks.Ģ3) Built in 1927, the Boat Chute was the first ride built at Georgia’s Lake Winnepesaukah amusement park, commonly known as Lake Winnie. I’m sure Frozen Ever After will move up this list once it officially debuts in 2016.Ģ4) Storybook Land Canal Boats is a leisurely paced boat ride that sails past miniature scenes from Disney’s animated films in the Fantasyland section of Disneyland. Based on the “Frozen” film, the new boat ride is expected to take visitors to Arendelle and Elsa’s ice palace during a Winter in Summer celebration. Frozen Ever After replaces the Maelstrom dark ride in the Norway pavilion at Florida’s Epcot. So I figured why not start out with a ride that isn’t even open yet. The 90-minute podcast was often entertaining and if you want to hear me go on at length about my unbridled hatred of water rides you should check it out.īut for now, let’s turn to the topic at hand: The top 25 theme park water rides in the U.S.Ģ5) Whenever I’m putting together a ranked list, I always like to include a wild card or two. I recently participated in a Season Pass podcast that focused on the best theme park water rides. A number of the rides appear at multiple parks in the U.S. I also managed to find room for a handful of rides from a few regional and smaller parks as well. So as you might expect, my list is dominated by Disney attractions, with Universal Studios, Busch Gardens, SeaWorld and Six Flags well represented as well. Far too many log flumes, river rapids rafts and shoot-the-chutes are interchangeable and indistinguishable from each other. The effects are pretty good (and admittedly, I get the impression that quite a few weren’t working when I rode), but I found the level of wetness a bit excessive for my liking, and I also don’t overly enjoy the ways it actually gets you wet in comparison to some other water rides I’ve done (I personally find things like the pool of water at the bottom of the boats and the water vortex somewhat unpleasant, personally).What I’m looking for in a water ride is storytelling and theming. I controversially don’t enjoy Valhalla that much.I must admit I haven’t actually ridden Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls, despite having visited IOA numerous times.In terms of some of the other highly-rated ones

Logger’s Leap at Thorpe Park a controversial choice, I know, but I did really enjoy it, and it’s probably the defunct attraction I miss most! For me, it got you wet without being excessively wet, it had a decent ride duration without feeling too tedious, and I also thought the double drop at the end was a brilliant and novel element! It’s definitely my all-time favourite UK water ride!.I also thought the boats were very comfortable. Splash Mountain at Walt Disney World, which was quite a nice level of wetness with a real feel-good, happy vibe about it and nice theming, as well as having a long ride duration without feeling tedious.Out of the log flumes I’ve ridden, I’d personally go with one of these two:

Log flume near me