With that, I was expecting warm water - like many heated pools in FL. It was just typical pool temp. I’d say it was the definition of tepid.
And since I passed out after uploading my vids to YouTube, I cane safely say the audio quality through the cheap pouch phone cover was good because the copyright system found the songs played on both rivers.
As to deadness of the park - you can see in the one video that a TM comes and finds me as I'm bobbing along in the river to tell me Ika Mona has reopened. It's slow enough that the TM remembered me, and then was able to find me in the river.
Other note - fell down twice. Once on the boardwalk over the wave pool and another time getting out of the lazy river at the end of the night. No drinks involved. Just really slippery surfaces. For the lazy river, I tripped on the steps so no big deal, but the boardwalk was flat and just super slippery.
A few things went down for water quality issues. Honu/Ika Mona and at one point the wave pool.
The volcano never did a show or anything. It changed from blue/green to blue/purple but that's about it.
Nearly none of the food places were open. People had rented cabanas, but I just found a nice little lounge chair to set up shop - no locker rental for me. Water in my Lorax water bottle from the Coke Freestyle machines and this was a no-pennies-spent few hours in the park for me.
Lost my tapu-tapu in one of the rivers. Having to tap to ride anything was annoying since nothing had a wait.
Arriving, parking to Volcano Bay was listed with signs but then all the booths were closed. I got pointed the right way though to park. Once parked it was again just me all the way until I got into the park. At most I ran into another party when getting a raft, and the small wait at OhNo. On the multi-person tube slides they offered to find a spare TM to ride with me if they didnt have any sort of line to get people from.
In the 2 hours from 5-7 I did.. Fearless River, 2 of the twisty tube slides (so many steps I needed a break), one of the Punga Racers, wandered a bit in the caves and such, OhNo drop slide, more wandering, went to Ika Mona but it went down for water quality, another round of the Fearless River and the Lazy River, and then I think I called it a night.
I'm not a droppy slide person, so I just wish they had more body slides that weren't trap door slides. A few of the rafts slides I figured I'd wait to do once I had other people to ride with.
I've got a pic, but the Punga Racer stairs look rough-rough.
You can see and hear the roads all around the park. There's no sense of being secluded outside of Orlando in any sort of "another world" sort of way.
It wasnt a bad experience at all, but I wasn't blown away. Nighttime lighting really wasnt much of anything for the park - surprising considering it's advertised initially as a nighttime park option.