I use my backyard swimming pool twice a year, and visit the flume rides included in my theme park annual passes maybe half as often. But despite my determination to avoid dampness, I recently departed Florida to dive into Dollywood’s NightFlight Expedition and Norwegian Cruise Line’s Great Tides Waterpark, brand-new bucket-list water-based attractions which might end up influencing the H2O-centric competition here in Orlando.
As the last living American secular saint, Dolly Parton left an indelible impact on popular culture akin to Walt Disney’s, so I’ll be forever grateful that I finally visited Dollywood a couple of weeks prior to her passing. Unable to appear in person at her Pigeon Forge theme park for the debut of its biggest-ever investment, Parton pre-recorded a welcome message wearing angelic-looking butterfly wings that proved eerily prescient only days later.
In spite of Dolly’s absence, I was excited to experience NightFlight Expedition, the most expensive expansion to Dollywood’s newest land, Wildwood Grove. Billed as a first-of-its-kind “immersive indoor adventure coaster,” the ride — whose design won awards for Mack Rides before it was even built — blends slow dark-ride scenes set in a storybook-style forest, a screen-based motion simulator and short roller-coaster dips into darkness with a seemingly free-floating boat trip. The attraction’s highlight is a short stretch of whitewater rapids with just enough splashing to be exciting but not soaking (unless you’re seated in the front row).
Mack’s ride system is legitimately revolutionary in its unique combination of different experiences, and there’s a lot of imagination and artistry evident throughout the attraction. However, anyone traveling to Tennessee this season specifically to ride NightFlight Expedition — or hoping its clone could come to Orlando — should temper their expectations. For starters, the ride’s theoretical hourly capacity is around 1,000 guests per hour, and it handled a fraction of that during my visit; that’s too low for the rumored Creature From the Black Lagoon ride currently commencing construction at Epic Universe’s Dark Universe. Second, NightFlight’s storytelling is frustrating to follow and ultimately unsatisfying, due to a combination of indistinct dialogue in the queue and ride, inferior computer-generated video elements, awkward pace-breaking scene transitions and a fundamental lack of dramatic payoff to the plot.
Fortunately, Dollywood has acknowledged the attraction’s issues, briefly closing it post-opening for tweaks and promising future improvements. And the resort as a whole — from its attractively landscaped hotels that include free express passes for the park’s world-class roller coasters to the Broadway-worthy live entertainment and addictive cinnamon bread — is well worth Orlando-area enthusiasts hopping on an inexpensive Allegiant flight from Sanford to Knoxville.
A few weeks after returning from Dollywood, I set sail on another aquatic adventure, this time aboard Norwegian Cruise Line’s Getaway. Our destination: a media preview of Great Tides Waterpark at Great Stirrup Cay, the newest expansion on the cruise industry’s oldest private island. Located within sight of Royal Caribbean’s Perfect Day at Coco Cay, NCL’s addition boasts a beautiful blue 170-foot tall multi-slide tower that’s 35 feet taller and significantly less garish than their competition’s. That sets the park’s aesthetic tone, with tropical landscaping and scenic stonework comparable to Typhoon Lagoon or Volcano Bay, albeit on a smaller scale.
Great Tides’ E-Ticket attraction, the Breakwater Blasters dueling water coasters, begins at the very top of that tower; luckily, conveyor belts mean you don’t have to carry your two-person rafts to the top for this or most of the other Whitewater-manufactured slides. It only offers one large down-and-up hill (compared to multiple on Volcano Bay’s Krakatau Aqua Coaster) but that one drop’s a doozy, and I loved colorfully illuminated tunnels you careen through.
The tower lacks a Summit Plummet-esque extreme drop slide, and I was less than enamored of Tropic Spiral, the first-of-its-kind Nautilus slide that sent me sliding helplessly backward in pitch blackness for most of the way. But I did appreciate the side-by-side Rapid Mat Racers and Whitewater Dash body slides — featuring more colorful tunnels along the route and competitive countdown timers at the splashdown — which keep throughput high enough that I never stood in line for a slide. Bonus points go to the nearby Cliffside Cove’s deceptively simple cliff jump and giant slide, which triggered flashbacks to near-fatal visits in my youth to New Jersey’s infamous Action Park.
Wandering River, an 800-foot-long lazy river, was my most anticipated Great Tides attraction, thanks to its unique multimedia indoor tunnel section. CGI sealife appear on video screens above and alongside your inner-tube, accompanied by ethereal orchestral music, and I saw a few different variations during my various laps around. Unfortunately, the final portion of the tunnel appears obviously unfinished, with bare black walls that aren’t sufficiently curved to block out the light, and the route leading up the tunnel is rather bare-bones, with no interactive water features. Perhaps Wandering River’s best feature is the adjoining Floataway Bar, which was always the busiest spot in the park; just don’t try floating downstream with your drink.
During a press conference, NCL executives mentioned possible improvements and expansions. I hope a wave pool and some larger group raft rides are high on the agenda, because for now there isn’t much that an entire family can do together, particularly if any of them have mobility challenges. Pricing hasn’t been officially publicized, but employees suggested admission costs around $80 to $100 per person (on top of your cruise fare), putting it on par with Disney’s and Universal’s water parks. I’d personally rather spend that money on onboard specialty dining, especially since Great Stirrup Cay already offers a gorgeous pool and playground for free. But if you stan waterslides without waiting, Great Tides Waterpark is guaranteed to get you wet.
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This article appears in Sept. 16-22, 2026.