PHOTOS - Major rebuild of Runoff Rapids underway at Disney's Blizzard Beach waterpark

Dec 07, 2017 in "Runoff Rapids"

Runoff Rapids refurbishment
Posted: Thursday December 7, 2017 11:23am EDT by WDWMAGIC Staff

Recent aerial views of Disney's Blizzard Beach waterpark show significant work is under at the Runoff Rapids water slides.

The complex of three slides originally closed for refurbishment in late January 2017, and did not reopen throughout the season.



Since the park closed for its scheduled winter refurbishment on October 30 2017, work has progressed quickly to remove large sections of the slides and associated plumbing work.

It isn't yet clear what the end result of the refurbishment will be, but it appears that the original slide sections are being reused. Blizzard Beach is scheduled to reopen on January 8 2018.

Aerial photos for WDWMAGIC by Colin Chardavoyne @cchard.

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ObobruNov 11, 2018

Does anyone know if the third slide will be fixed this winter? They never removed it when they fixed the other 2 and just left it overgrown and visible like they ran out of time.

HauntedPirateJan 14, 2018

My son and wife were at Blizzard Beach on Thursday. He said that only two of the three tubes at Runoff Rapids are open. Can anyone else confirm or deny this?

davis_unoxxJan 10, 2018

That's very unfortunate that they decided to do this!

ToTBellHopJan 10, 2018

No. Just tube slides that used to have the option of doubles and triples. They’ve physically scratched off the labels in the queues where you used to line up for a double or triple and have completely removed mention of the option from disneyworld.com. Not sure of the reasoning. We were more than a little frustrated though as our kids are too old for the toddler area, too young for the tween area, and too little for most of the other slides. They were daring enough for the downhill body slide, but otherwise it was the (awesome) family raft ride for us, wave pool, and lazy river. We had fun, but with the splash pads at many resorts now, we aren’t eager to return until the kids can swim well.

wdwmagicJan 10, 2018

Is that across the board? Including Crush n Gusher?

Walt dJan 10, 2018

Go to you tube put in kelly slater wave pool, thats what they need, but i no disney would never do it. I would never leave..

ToTBellHopJan 09, 2018

Slides.

Mathew hJan 09, 2018

Is this for on the slides or in the lazy river?

davis_unoxxJan 09, 2018

Good point! Also cuts back on capacity a lot, does not seem like a good idea by Disney!

ToTBellHopJan 09, 2018

I went myself. Typhoon removed them, too. Sucks if your kids aren’t strong swimmers yet.

davis_unoxxJan 09, 2018

Did you see photos or a video where they did that?

Mathew hJan 09, 2018

Excellent! So excited!

ToTBellHopJan 09, 2018

Why did they get rid of the double and triple tubes?

THE Monorail LimeJan 09, 2018

YAY!