Universal

Volcano Bay Premium Seating

May 16, 2019August 11, 2022 by The Orlando Duo

All of Orlando’s theme parks have some kind of add-on experience associated with them. Whether it’s additional tours, lockers, cabanas, or dining plans, there’s always something extra to do. But how do you know which add-on experiences are worth it and which you can skip? We’ll test out some of these add-ons on occasion and report them here. On a recent trip to Universal’s Volcano Bay, we upgraded to premium seating. Having been twice (once with premium seating and once without) we’ve created a list of pros and cons and given our final verdict. Is Volcano Bay premium seating worth it?

Volcano Bay premium seating includes two loungers with a small lockbox underneath a shade in a roped-off area. When you get to the park you’ll head to the Concierge hut where you’ll be given a colored wristband with your name. It’s this wristband that gets you past the ropes and into the premium seating area. It’s possible to buy the loungers on the day you visit the park, but they do often sell out so it’s best to get them ahead of time – especially if you are planning on visiting during the summer.

Pros

Buying Volcano Bay premium seating ahead of time also gives you the biggest pro of premium seating – early entry. There are no guarantees, but early entry greatly increases your chances to ride practically every ride Volcano Bay has before most of the crowd even gets there. There will still be lines, but they won’t be nearly as long as they will later in the day.

It may seem obvious to say, but guaranteed seating is a definite positive of Volcano Bay premium seating. Finding perfect seating in a water park is always hard, but it’s even more difficult somewhere as popular as Volcano Bay. Knowing you never have to worry about finding shade really takes a lot off your mind. You’re at a water park to be in the sun, but mixing in periods of shade is important too.

You’re bound to get hungry during your day and this is where another pro of Volcano Bay premium seating comes in – your personal attendant. Each cabana has a menu inside of it and any time you want an alcoholic beverage or some food, just tell your personal attendant and they’ll bring it right to your cabana.

Cons

There are a lot of things to like about Volcano Bay premium seating but there are a few things that stuck out to us as definite negatives.

We didn’t realize the first negative until about halfway through our day when we discovered that our cabana’s shade only has two positions ― up and down. These positions are fine for the first half of the day when we could put the shade down for sun and up for shade, but once the afternoon hit and the sun moved to the front of the cabana, where we were in the sun regardless of what we did with the shade. The only way we shaded ourselves was by jury-rigging the shade to balance in such a way to block the sun.

This oversight is definitely something to remember because one of the entire reasons we got Volcano Bay premium seating in the first place is for the guaranteed shade. Yet, in the middle of the afternoon, when the sun is the hottest and we are looking for some respite, we have to precariously balance our shade in a way it wasn’t designed for? We were able to make it work, but few other cabanas weren’t as lucky as we are. During this period in the afternoon is when most of the people in our area left and we’re pretty sure it’s because they couldn’t get out of the sun.

Having a personal attendant to get us food was a great option for lunch and drinks, but there are a few caveats to the attendant. The first caveat is you can only order food from one restaurant. It’s honestly not that big of a deal because we used the restaurant for our meals and explored other food locations for our snacks, but it’s worth mentioning. The attendant also won’t fill the refillable Coke Freestyle cup because it’s self-serve.

Paying for the food you order with the personal attendant is also a tad annoying. You have to pay with a credit card and each purchase is charged individually, there are no open tabs. They do this because they don’t want you to have an open tab at the restaurant if you want to leave the park. This makes a lot of sense and we understand why they do this, so this was more of an annoyance rather than a negative to the premium seating.

A final, but still important, con about Volcano Bay premium seating is the price. It’s understandable that something titled “premium” in an already expensive park is going to be costly, but premium seating can almost cost as much as your ticket into the park or more.

Our Verdict

Is Volcano Bay premium seating worth it? Maybe. It really depends on the price. We were given our tickets as an anniversary gift by some friends of ours and went during the offseason, so we justified buying the lower-than-average cost of the premium seating by saying it’s the price we would pay for a ticket anyway. Knowing we were saving so much money in the long run made the cons of Volcano Bay premium seating much easier to bear. However, unless we were in a very similar situation, we probably wouldn’t purchase it again.

Everything that was good about Volcano Bay premium seating had a “but” with it. The seats have a shade, but the shade only works for part of the day. There is a personal attendant for your food and drink, but the menu is limited, doesn’t work for Coke Freestyle drinks and we really just didn’t use it that often. A positive of the premium seating was early entry and the locker. If we had to pay full price for our tickets and a higher price for the premium seating on top of it, we would have left much more disappointed. It’s not that premium seating was bad, it just wouldn’t be good enough at the price point it normally is.