According to a new study that analyzed more than 345,000 Google reviews, the guests at Hurricane Harbor Phoenix, a waterpark in Glendale, hate waiting in line, too. And they do a lot of it at the West Valley waterpark.
The folks at Sudoku Bliss, a website devoted to the game, took time away from filling out their grids to conduct a study on which theme parks in the U.S. have the worst wait times. (The implication being that while you're in the Lightning Lane for the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland or dripping wet at Hurricane Harbor, you'll be playing Sudoku to pass the time, natch.)
Anyway, the authors of the study "built a list of more than 100 theme parks across the country and collected Google Reviews for each," the report intro reads. "We then analyzed the mention of 15 different keywords and phrases related to waiting in long lines and calculated the percentage of people who experience lengthy waits at each park. We then ranked parks from the highest to lowest percentages to determine which theme parks have the longest and shortest lines."
Right at the top of the list is our own Hurricane Harbor Phoenix, with 33.39% of reviews mentioning long lines or wait times. That percentage of complaints is more than double that of the second-place attraction, Six Flags White Water in Marietta, Georgia.
According to the study, the 10 U.S. attractions with the most reviews that mention long lines or wait times are:
- 1. Hurricane Harbor Phoenix, Glendale, 33.39%
- 2. Six Flags White Water, Marietta, Ga., 16.04%
- 3. Six Flags Hurricane Harbor, Jackson Township, N.J., 15.68%
- 4. Sesame Place Philadelphia, Langhorne, Pa., 15.11%
- 5. Wild Waves Theme and Water Park, Federal Way, Wash., 14.56%
- 6. Schlitterbahn Waterpark New Braunfels, New Braunfels, Texas, 13.22%
- 7. Elitch Gardens, Denver, 12.52%
- 8. Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, Vallejo, Calif., 11.84%
- 9. Six Flags Over Georgia, Austell, Ga., 11.41%
- 10. Mt. Olympus Water & Theme Park Resort, Wisconsin Dells, Wis., 9.96%
