SeaWorld celebrates its 60th birthday with a pair of revamps: a gentle remake of Tassie’s twin water slides, and a total makeover with new Penguin Trek

Central Florida is just now defrosting after a damp, frigid winter, and theme park fans are already buzzing about the bounty of new attractions that's promised to blossom at the area's top two theme park resorts this coming summer. Universal Orlando has confirmed that their DreamWorks replacement for KidZone will premiere at the Studios during the summer season, with Shrek's moss-encrusted home and the spiderweb-covered Trollercoaster already obviously poking over the construction walls. A nighttime fountain show featuring drones and a nostalgia-driven parade including the Ghostbusters are also strongly rumored. Not to be outdone, Walt Disney World will finally open the long-awaited Tiana's Bayou Adventure, the Princess and the Frog revamp of Magic Kingdom's Splash Mountain, this summer, as well as a free drone show of their own at Disney Springs, among other seasonal additions.

But before you skip ahead to celebrating the solstice, Disney and Universal's oceanic alternative has a springtime harvest of major new offerings to devour. The SeaWorld family of theme parks (whose corporate parent recently blandly rebranded as "United Parks & Resorts") turned 60 years old on March 21. In addition to offering $60 tickets on select dates and reviving their rarely-seen Shamu & Crew costumed mascots, SeaWorld Orlando and Aquatica are joining in their elder San Diego sibling's diamond soiree by debuting new rides of their own this spring, and I was recently offered the opportunity to preview them both.

Last month, I slapped on a fashionable hard hat–and–safety vest ensemble in order to walk along the under-construction track of Penguin Trek, SeaWorld Orlando's upcoming indoor-outdoor roller coaster. This new ride recycles the building originally used for Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin, an ambitious but unsatisfying trackless dark ride that opened with much fanfare in 2013, but quietly closed in 2020.

The structure's insides were largely stripped, and in their stead now stand a research base-inspired queue and loading area, along with the coaster's indoor introduction. Where Puck the CGI penguin's colorful cave once stood (I could still see the original paint on the floor), snowmobile-styled coaster cars will soon glide past a digitally enhanced vista across the icy tundra, before turning a corner and dipping into a treacherous cavern of intricately sculpted rockwork.

Following those brief show scenes, the first of two electromagnetic launches will fling riders into the outdoors portion of adventure. The sharply banked but non-inverting track, which totals 3,020 feet, coils back and forth around itself, at one point appearing to come perilously close to the Manta flying coaster. Although advertised as a family coaster with a height requirement of only 42 inches, I wouldn't underestimate how the course's convoluted curlicues could cause its 43 mph maximum speed to feel far faster than it sounds on paper.

Perhaps more importantly, the fantastic (if foul-smelling) penguin exhibit that served as the finale of the old ride is still fully intact at the new attraction's exit. Every departing rider will be funneled past the flightless fowl, and their frigid viewing area will also be accessible to non-riders. As an added bonus, the entire Antarctica area — whose once-sparkling glaciers had gone grimy gray — is getting a much-needed makeover as well, including an expansion of the Expedition Cafe's offerings and the addition of a walk-up bar.

While we're yet awaiting an official opening date for Penguin Trek from SeaWorld that's more specific than "spring," its neighboring water park Aquatica has already sprung its new headliner on spring break guests with March 15's opening of Tassie's Underwater Twist. On the one hand, the "all-new" moniker in the marketing is a bit of a misnomer, since these twin WhiteWater West-built slides have been around since the park opened in 2008 under the name Tassie's Twisters. After climbing the slides' towering stairs, pairs of guests still sit in toboggan-style inner tubes and accelerate down a dark chute into a large bowl, swirling around several times until they're flushed down the middle and splash down into a pool adjoining the lazy river.

But what makes Tassie's worthy of being considered not merely a new attraction, but a one-of-a-kind, is found beneath the domes that have been installed above the original bowls, emerging from video projectors that now ring the inner column. Instead of circling around a big plastic commode, riders now are completely immersed in digital sea life drawn from Australia's iconic reefs, including whales and sharks. The real-time renders of underwater creatures are accompanied by soothing New Age-y music, reminding me pleasantly of old computer screensavers.

I rarely swim of my own free will unless the thermometer breaks 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but I willingly took not one but two trips down Tassie's Underwater Twist on a brisk March day just to enjoy its tranquil vibe — a phrase I never thought I'd associate with a water slide. And since it has no set height limit (as long as your kid can sit up without falling through the raft) and a higher-than-average throughput of about 500 guests per hour, I predict Tassie's will prove an equally huge hit with families attending Aquatica this spring, and for many seasons to come.