5. New slides at Wet 'n Wild Orlando

Wet 'n Wild Orlando, Universal Orlando's water park, has announced that it will open a unique new "racing" water slide for the 2014 season, dubbed Aqua Drag Racer. It claims that the slide will be the tallest and fastest of its kind in Florida. It will stand at 60 feet tall, and will allow guests to race each other through a series of twists, turns and steep hills while lying on a foam mat. Four riders will race each other at a time, hitting a top speed of 15 feet per second.

Aqua Drag Racer will feature a clock at the bottom, allowing guests to see how fast they plummeted down it - and to declare a winner. The slide is being manufactured by Canadian specialist ProSlide, and will be a customized example of the firm's KrakenRACER model.

To make room for the new addition, the Bubba Tub family raft ride will be removed. Wet 'n Wild plans to reuse some of the infrastructure from Bubba Tub, particularly plumbing work, to make the installation of the new addition faster and easier.

The expensive addition of Aqua Drag Racer should put an end to rumors that Universal might move Wet 'n Wild, re-installing it on the main Universal Orlando site rather than its current location on International Drive. Such an undertaking would be very complex, given that all of the existing plumbing would need to be recreated on the new site.