‘I had to walk down the bottom in tears’: SeaWorld customer calls out Aquatica after ‘humiliating’ incident on waterslide

A SeaWorld customer posted a TikTok calling out Aquatica water park in San Antonio after being denied access to ride a waterslide. 

Customers who purchase a SeaWorld admission ticket but would like to visit Aquatica, SeaWorld’s waterpark, will need to upgrade to an Aquatica ticket or Pass. Special attractions at Aquatica include, “Water slides, pools and rivers, restaurants, shopping, animals,” and 5 kid friendly play areas, per its website.

The user @thewanderingrodgersfam has reached over 82,000 views on her viral storytime video. She added a caption and tagged @SeaWorldSATX saying, “PSA this is NOT how you should be treating your customers when we're paying $500+ dollars to be at your waterpark all day. Do better.”

To start her video, the user tells viewers that if you are planning on going to Aquatica, “know that something like this might happen to you.” 

She explains that along with her husband, daughter, and mom, she visited Aquatica the previous weekend and paid a total of $238 for their admission tickets. “To pay for parking it’s about $40,” she adds, “So now I’m about $300 into this thing.” 

Once the family arrived at Aquatica, she says they “could not find a place to sit to save our life.” 

“My mom is 70, so I just wanted to make sure that she had an umbrella, it’s Texas, it’s really freakin’ hot,” she explains. Because of this, the user says she upgraded to buy a set of 2 lounge chairs that cost $179 in total. 

“So now we’re like $500 deep into this day,” she adds, “That’s before food, and anything else.”

Next, after what she says was a “great morning” in the lazy river, she says her family decided to all go ride one of the waterslides. 

“My mom and myself were going together, and my husband and my daughter were gonna ride together,” she explains. 

When they made it to the top of the slide, the user says that the lifeguard on duty “physically” pulled her away and asked her to step out of the line to go stand on a scale. 

“I walk over and I’m like, why do I have to step on this?” she says she asked the worker. 

“Because we need to weigh you to make sure that you and your mom can ride together,” she says the worker responded. 

She obliged, and said that the worker told her she was “too heavy to ride this ride at all.”

Confused, the user says she asked why she was too heavy to ride the ride when the weight capacity was stated as “400 combined pounds.” Between herself and her mom, she says they are “way under that.” 

“I am a bigger girl,” she adds, “but it’s 400 pounds combined to ride this ride.” The user says the worker insisted she was not allowed on the water slide at all, no matter who she was to ride with. 

She asks, “We couldn’t have switched? Like it was me and my daughter?”

Nevertheless, she says she had to “walk down the tower to the bottom” in tears, while the rest of her family went down the slide. 

The user explains that after her family finished the waterslide, her husband went to speak with the lifeguard at the bottom because he was “livid.”

“They just denied my wife to ride this ride up here,” she says he told the lifeguard, “and I just saw behind me as I was loading to get on, a dad that was like 6’5’, probably 300 pounds” along with his “teenage son” that looked easily “175 pounds.”

She says the lifeguard apologized to her and her husband, but that he “wasn’t up there” so he “doesn’t know what happened.”

“I’m like OK, cool, as I’m like bawling in tears,” the user adds.

SeaWorld Aquatica made her get on the scale before going down a waterslide

Next, the user mentions that the main issue she had was that she had “to be put on a scale in front of like 30 people, and then denied,” very loudly, as they told her to walk down the tower alone.

“What is your problem Aquatica?” she asks, “like why would you do that to someone, first off.” And secondly, “if you’re gonna enforce that rule, that needs to be like across the board, because what happened after that was not OK.” 

She adds, “watching other people that were much bigger than me going down the ride … like no, that is not OK.” 

After all of this, the user says that she felt her whole experience at the park was ruined, but they needed to stay at the park longer to have lunch before leaving.

Luckily, before leaving the park the user says she saw a woman walking around that looked like a manager. “I was very upset,” she explains, “so I walked over.” 

The user says she explained to the woman what happened on the water slide, and was met with another response of “I don’t know what to tell you.” 

The user says she continued, “you shouldn’t have been denied but like, I can’t do anything about it.” 

“Take it up with corporate,” she says she adds, “maybe write them an email.” 

“So this is me taking it up with corporate,” the user tells viewers. “Aquatica San Antonio… I’m appalled by the way that you treat your customers, first off, and how you have your lifeguard’s trained.” 

“Do better,” she adds before ending her video.

@thewanderingrodgersfam This is for @SeaWorldSATX @seaworld san antonio .. PSA this is NOT how you should be treating your customers when were paying $500+ dollars to be at your water park all day. Do better. #fyp #storytime #doyourthingtiktok #aquaticasanantoniotexas #seaworldsanantonio #blowthisup #viraltiktok #viral ♬ original sound - Thewanderingrodgersfam

“Why not have the scale at the bottom of the ride?” a supportive viewer told @thewanderingrodgersfam in the comment section. “Yup 1000000% this,” she responded.

She says in another comment that in the end, “They just could have handled it so much better … and I wouldn’t have felt humiliated.”

Aquatica states on their website that the maximum operational load for single riders is “250 pounds (114 kg), double riders 400 pounds (182 kg).”

“No rider’s weight may exceed 250 lbs/113 kgs,” they continue. 

The user stated in her comment section, “I was still under the weight, I’m 5’4 211 lbs … so it literally made 0 sense. And then watching bigger people then me go down without being weighed .. it wasn’t right. Do better @SeaWorld.”

The Daily Dot reached out to Aquatica San Antonio via media contact form and @thewanderingrodgersfam via TikTok comment and direct message. 

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