A tale of two parks.

Blizzard beach was the remaining Disney water park that we hadn’t visited until today. Knowing we were on a mission to experience two water parks in one day we left early, arriving at Blizzard Beach at 8:50am. Once through the now familiar bag check and ticket turnstiles, we waited at the park closed rope line until 9am. Once the park opened and the rope was removed, the assembled crowd of people surged forwards looking excitedly around at the ski slope themed water park.
Many of the rides were started from the top of Mount Gushmoore. To climb the mountain there were several staircases or a chairlift (complete with fake skis mounted as footrests). We liked the idea of the chairlift but the long queue encouraged us to use the stairs.

Having climbed Mount Gushmoore we rode the four in a giant round dingy ride, which excited Matty as he likes to sit next to Dad so that between us we can drive the dinghy up the sides and hopefully spin it around enough so that poor Liz ends up going backwards down the ride. He then laughs at the display of excitement and the thrill of the ride that is painted all over her face and carried on the screams / whoops of delight as she plummets down yet another mini slope backwards.

The second ride we tackled from Mount Gushmoore was slush gushers. This was a ride a bit like a regular flume but with a mini kamikaze hill on it at the end. You slid down pretty quickly having to keep arms and legs (straight out) crossed and to our amazement Luke loved it and wanted a second go.

The champion of the “4 slide on a mat” ride retained his crown (ahem… me!!), beating off all the cheeky young whipper-snappers by two furlongs. I sailed down it at speed much to Matty’s disgust. Due to my overwhelming victory, our race was quickly forgotten and Matty changed the subject at every given moment to avoid talking about it.

We rode a couple more rides before leaving to make our way to Aquatica, SeaWorld’s water park. Situated opposite SeaWorld it was a slightly bigger park with a few more rides than the Disney water parks. However combined, the Disney parks were bigger and in some ways better. We much preferred the Disney wave pool at Typhoon Lagoon to the wave pool at Aquatica or Blizzard Beach. Both wave pools we had visited today were similar in the fact that the waves were constant like the sea. The type of wave pool we prefer is a still pool that at a predefined moment has a single large wave surging down the pool from one end to the other.

Due to our late arrival at Aquatica the park was super busy by the time we arrived. Every ride had considerable queues and so the number of rides we were able to enjoy was limited. Despite this we still managed to ride five water rides which was pretty good.

We began with tube slides on mats. This was a fast ride and started off with you launching yourself down an enclosed tube on your mat head first. The tubes wound this way and that and then all emerged into the sunshine at the same point in a long line. From here you rode downhill and into a long straight which was specifically to provide enough space for de-acceleration.

Having beaten Matty again, something he still disputes, despite there being time clocks at the end of each ride lane Matty immediately took us to the next ride still objecting to my champions declaration and winning speech as he wound his way along the path to a four in a raft ride / massive slide. Once on the ride the guard asked us who was to ride backwards, we all said Matty but somehow Liz till ended up backwards.

Next up we headed for two in a figure of eight raft. This is a bit like two ring doughnuts joined together. You each sit in one of the holes with your legs over the edges. This ride began and ended in the most confusing fashion possible. We queued and had to wait near the ride exit to pick up a raft. Between the end of the queue line and the ride exit was a mini lazy river. The confusion arose as we began to wonder if we were in the queue for the lazy river or the ride we were attempting to undertake. Once we’d picked up the raft we had to ride the lazy river until it went around the corner where unknown to us you got out of the water and into the line. Once we’d ridden (there were two rides the same, one branching left the other right from the top), if you ended up on the far side from the queue you couldn’t get out but had to ride the lazy river back to the original queue line. I think the designer had a great idea and concept for the ride as there were tanks of fish you could see as you floated along the lazy river but in practice it didn’t work very well. It was way to easy for people to wait in the lazy river at the exit of the far side and grab you raft, thus pushing into the queue without being caught.

On our way to another ride we spotted people in life jackets floating at speed around what looked like a lazy river. It turned out to be a lot of fun! We grabbed life jackets from the massive tubs of waiting life jackets and waded into the “fast lazy river”. It was bizarre floating thanks to our increased buoyancy at speed around the lazy river, which was anything but lazy. The only reason it was a lazy river was you didn’t have to do too much swimming. We went around twice then Matty and Luke “accidentally” missed the exit and so Liz waited for them and I followed to make sure they didn’t have the same problem the next time around!!

Our last ride was another two dinghy style ride. This time you descended down the tube and into a cone shaped funnel before whooshing down into the pool at the end of the slide. A few minutes later the rain / storm warnings echoed around the park and we decided to call it a day, remembering how wet we got at Seaworld previously. It was a good call as we were putting our shoes and socks back on we saw people walking back down the rides as they had all been closed. We sat in the car on towels in our swim stuff and drove back to the hotel, due to the localised rain we managed to avoid getting wet as back at the hotel the sun was still shining.

Back at the hotel, we showered and headed out to see Downtown Disney. I had read the guide book and thought it might be fun to have dinner (tea) at Cafe T-Rex, a Jurassic themed restaurant run by the same group who own Rainforest Cafe. Once we’d negotiated the massive road works and road closures that our Google Maps sat-nav knew nothing about (turn left only to find the road closed), we parked and made our way to Cafe T-Rex. It was excellently themed and looked really good from the outside, unfortunately scores of other people also had the same opinion and were keen to dine there. We queued for a table fearing that we’d be told they were fully booked. We made a reservation but ended up waiting until 8pm to get a table, despite the seating capacity being 945!! Once inside it was really loud with all the dinosaurs roaring periodically. We sat in the ice age section near a giant woolly mammoth. Whilst waiting outside we obtained a menu and decided what we’d have, hoping this would speed things up a bit when we eventually got a table which it did do. It was a shame that our server wasn’t very focused on our objective! To be fair to him the poor guy was rushed off his feet with all the tables in “his domain” wanting his attention. By the time we’d finished our massive megasaurus burgers we were so full we couldn’t manage many of our crinkle cut dino fries.
We made our way back to the hotel and to bed knowing that the next day would be our last full day in Florida.