Universal Orlando’s Volcano Bay is getting rid of its TapuTapu wearable and virtual queue system later this year, Universal announced on Tuesday.
The Universal press release said TapuTapu won’t be available starting on Oct. 1. The plastic bracelet device was heavily promoted before Volcano Bay’s 2017 debut to allow guests to virtually wait in line, get alerted when their ride time came up and to open rental lockers, as well as trigger interactive elements throughout the park.
TapuTapu (Universal)
“Guests can access attraction queues at their leisure” after the change, according to Universal.
For five months in 2026 and 2027, however, no one will be riding anything at Volcano Bay. The water park will be undergoing a seasonal closure starting Oct. 26, 2026 to conduct maintenance. It’s scheduled to reopen on or before March 24, 2027.
Universal’s press release, “We are working with guests who have purchased tickets to visit Volcano Bay during this timeframe as well as Universal annual and seasonal passholders affected by this update.”
One theme park pundit erroneously assumed that the temporary closure meant that Volcano Bay was moving to seasonal operation on a permanent basis.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Sadly surprise level zero for Volcano Bay to shrink to a seasonal offering. <br><br>Remember at first they were going to do nights and good food?<br><br>As much as I love water parks, the truth is most of you don't. It took offering a FREE ticket for Disney's to get busy again. <a href=”https://t.co/6u88Rmuy0O”>pic.twitter.com/6u88Rmuy0O</a></p>— Professor Leisure🍍 (@TheLeisureProf) <a href=”https://twitter.com/TheLeisureProf/status/1917216905212944811?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>April 29, 2025</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
Universal made no such announcement about a permanent change to Volcano Bay’s schedule.
This also isn’t the first closure of this kind for Volcano Bay. The park also closed from Nov. 2, 2020, to Feb. 26, 2021 for similar maintenance reasons.