Last summer and again this summer, my husband V and I revisited Water Country USA in Williamsburg, VA, for the first time in several years. Water Country USA, a waterslide park owned by SeaWorld, is located about 150 miles south of Washington, DC. The drive takes us almost two and a half hours each way, depending on traffic, making it an easy day trip by our standards.
We first visited the park in 2010, the year I finally bought my VW. At the time, my stepdaughters—now in their 20s and living on their own—were still in elementary school.
While Water Country USA holds fond memories for me, I wasn’t prepared for how much the cost of family fun in America has skyrocketed nearly 15 years later. I’m still baffled by how people manage to afford it.
A top concern for Foreign Service Officers considering a domestic tour is the cost of living. The Washington, DC area, including the broader National Capital Region, is among the most expensive in the country. The largest expenses obviously include housing, children’s education or daycare, and food, but the cost of entertainment also impacts budgets significantly. It’s normal to take trips with your family or go out and do activities together on the weekend.
I couldn’t recall exactly how much it cost to visit Water Country USA in 2010, but a quick online search shows that adult tickets were around $46, with an additional $12 parking surcharge. While I remember the food being overpriced, it wasn’t excessive. For context, the park was ranked sixth among the top 20 U.S. water parks that year, attracting nearly 800,000 visitors.
V and I went there frequently in the 2010-2015 era and had a lot of fun. We used to take underwater disposable cameras there to snap pics as we played; last year we upgraded to the Polaroid Wave Underwater digital camera.
A year ago, as summer 2023 drew to a close, V and I decided to spend a day at Water Country USA. Taking advantage of a promotion that also included a summer 2024 season pass, I paid $78.99 each for two adult tickets. It seemed like a great deal at the time. However, I didn’t anticipate how quickly all the other costs would add up.
First, considering the high à la carte food prices, I opted to purchase two adult all-day dining packages at $44.99 each. This allowed us to grab a drink or snack every 90 minutes, helping to offset what would have been significant costs for lunch, snacks, and bottled water throughout the day. After factoring in taxes and service fees for purchasing tickets online, the subtotal came to $273.85.
Second, parking had increased to $30. It’s the same parking lot!
Third, securing essentials like your phone, wallet, keys, towels, and other items you can’t take on the slides (but also aren’t realistic to store in the trunk of your car way out in the parking lot) meant shelling out another $30 for a locker rental.
At this point, our total was up to $333.85—and that’s not even accounting for the cost of a full tank of gas in my VW or the 4Runner for the nearly five-hour round trip.
Approaching $400 seemed steep for two grown-ups to ride some plastic waterslides and have an unhealthy meal. But I tried to ignore it because I like it there and I know the park has operating expenses and staff to pay. Little did I know that despite paying all that money, we would only ride five waterslides during our 2023 visit!
According to the post-visit survey I filled out, we waited between 45 and 80 minutes for every ride. That totaled nearly four hours of our day spent waiting in the sun. We were also disheartened and annoyed to be queue-jumped over and over (and over) by people with Quick Queue bracelets that cost $129.99 each! Apparently, to have our cake and eat it too, we would have needed to spend an additional $260, bringing our total for the day to well over $600. To me, these are Disneyland-level prices or above just to ride waterslides!
Overall, it was crowded, the bathrooms were dirty, and the food was greasy. Was this the same place I’d remembered so fondly? To the park’s credit, they have a shaded picnic area outside the front gate for people who choose to pack a picnic. Walking around that day and looking at people, I found myself wondering how many of them could actually afford the fun they were having vs. how many just charged it to a credit card with a high interest rate and forgot about it.
Of course, the survey I filled out about my guest experience received no response from the park.
So when 2024 rolled around, I had mixed feelings about going back. We had season passes already, and I hated to waste them. But they would be useless on their own without incurring all the extra costs for parking, lockers, and food. In addition, Virginia was experiencing a major heat wave. The park would likely be crowded. I didn’t relish the thought of standing in line, barefoot in the sun, for hours longer than we’d get to ride.
But we wanted to go, so I checked out the prices. In 2024, prices had risen again over last year. Parking had increased another $2 to $32. The adult all-day dining packages had risen another $5 to $49.99 each. Remembering the low-quality food from last time, and how we felt compelled to eat more of it “since we’d paid for it,” we decided this year to skip the dining packages and just buy à la carte food at lunchtime. We drank water from drinking fountains to the extent possible.
But I did splurge and buy the dreaded $129.99 Quick Queue bracelets (the price for which varies by day of the week), just to see if the experience would be better.
Between the $30 locker cost, $32 for parking, $259.98 for Quick Queue bracelets, a stupid $19.99 online purchase surcharge (which all came out to $341.97) plus whatever we paid for gas and lunch, it seemed a crazy amount of expense on top of the fact we already had season passes that had cost $157.98 paid the year before!
How is this a reasonable value for what you get? Have I turned into my dad in the mid-2000s, confused as to why jeans were no longer $15?
The good news is that the park wasn’t crowded the one day so far we’ve visited in 2024. I attribute that to a lucky break in the heatwave and overcast skies. But it was still very warm and humid and the cold water was a shocking relief.
The thing I didn’t anticipate was the discomfort I felt using the Quick Queue bracelet. When you approach a waterslide, there are two lines: one for regular entry, and one for Quick Queue. Quick Queue patrons can use the Quick Queue line an unlimited number of times to enter the rides and jump ahead of everyone else waiting. Compared to last summer when many people seemed to sport the bracelets, this summer fewer did the day we visited. In fact, almost no one seemed to have them this year.
I tried to remember back to prior visits when we’d been “lapped” repeatedly by people with the bracelets. Had they looked embarrassed? Did they feel bad that we were all sweating in the sun while they kept taking our turns? I don’t think they did. But I did.
I felt very bad walking past all these waiting kids, looking at me with big eyes, knowing I expected to take their turns. I hid behind my big sunglasses and didn’t make eye contact with anyone. Had we paid for it? Dearly. But did it feel good? I don’t think it did. Especially as an adult.
I feel bad, I told V. We paid for it! he reassured me. But we agreed we wouldn’t cut on any ride more than once in a row because if it felt bad to cut it would feel worse to lap people. Also, there were several rides to go on and we wanted to try most of them.
On principle, I dislike the two-tiered patron system where the park charges extra for various amenities without limiting the total number of visitors per day. While this approach likely generates significant revenue for the park, it severely degrades the guest experience. Waiting up to 80 minutes for a two-minute waterslide is, quite frankly, ridiculous. And if everyone is paying this much (the minimum is still a lot), the “VIP” level is unnecessary and inauthentic.
I don’t want to support the park in these practices, and yet I also don’t want to stay stuck in line the whole visit. Is this the environment we want to create for our “family fun?” That everything is about money and being “first?”
I went to water parks with my dad throughout my entire childhood and never remember it being like this.
ChatGPT’s take on the park’s current level of popularity:
Water Country USA is a popular water park located in Williamsburg, VA, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. While it may not have the same level of fame as some larger or more renowned water parks, it consistently ranks among the top water parks in the U.S. due to its variety of water slides, attractions, and family-friendly environment. Its popularity is also bolstered by its affiliation with SeaWorld and its location near other major attractions in Williamsburg.
It was fun to skip the lines one day, but I didn’t expect climbing all those stairs to wipe me out so badly. Usually you climb slowly because there are so many people. But when the only thing standing in your way is how fast you can get up there, you realize how slow you are and how hot it is. Maybe it served me right for cutting everyone! At one point we got hurried along by other Quick Queue patrons for not cutting fast enough!
Unfortunately for me, I forgot to take Dramamine. All my speed-riding left me with motion sickness just three rides in. I recovered, but we ended up spending a long time in the morning in the lazy river before it got crowded, just holding hands and floating along, relaxed and laughing.
To be clear, paying for these extras was a choice we made to either visit the park or not. I just wish that these enjoyable family experiences, which we were able to give our kids and still love now, weren’t reserved for the most privileged. I understand that it’s never going to be cheap, but in my opinion, the cost-gouging has really gotten out of hand.
Perhaps this is considered normal to others, and we’ve all become quite complacent. But even though I can afford it (to the reduction of other non-essentials and without debt), it still feels excessive.
Collecting Postcards 
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