Today we’ll visit our first waterpark! But we need to address the elephant in the room. I’m not sure if you saw the reports but our night’s sleep was rudely interrupted by a state-wide alarm which was triggered on every mobile phone that had been left switched on at 4:15am this morning. According to news outlets, we read later in the day, it was a total accident but left residents furious. It would have been interesting to have heard the effect of so many mobile devices ringing an alarm in unison from inside one of the hotels. My guess is it would have been really loud and scared the pants off the night porter / concierge. We’ve since learned it’s tested monthly but somebody accidentally programmed the wrong type of alarm, which alerted everyone’s phones – oops!
The general commotion caused by our early morning call, caused us to be up by 5am which was slightly better than yesterday, so hopefully by the middle of next week we’ll be getting a decent night’s sleep.
Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon is located much closer to our villa than the theme parks. Having left in good time we were able to park a couple of rows from the main entrance but needed to wait behind the rope preventing access to the water rides / pool / play areas until 10am when the park opened. We were delighted to discover the park wasn’t very busy, which allowed us to enjoy most of the rides multiple times without much queuing time. Once we’d indulged in as many rides as we could manage, followed by a wave machine pool we exited stage left and returned to the villa to shower and change.
Above, three flumes are ridden in pairs on an inflatable which are propelled by high-pressure water jets. And below three identical tubes dropping 200 feet (66m) which allow the riders to race each other to the bottom (and yes, dear reader I won in the battle of Tim vs Dan vs me).
Our swimming activities had created a monstrous appetite, which we decided could be tamed by sampling some pancakes from “iHOP” (International House of Pancakes), an American pancake/waffle chain Sophie had sampled while visiting LA. From there we’d rest our rollercoaster legs and take a gentle stroll around an outlet village and browse some sporting goods stores including Nike, Adidas and Under Armour. But you know what they say about the best plans! The “little pancake place” turned out to be a dragon slayer, and in the battle of “Dan vs pancakes”, Dan threw in the towel, raised the white flag and requested a doggie bag. We suspect the number of refillable 700ml drinks (yes you read that right – each glass really was 24 floz), didn’t help us and might be a contributing factor to the reason why American waistlines are often on the larger side. Overall the group did an amazing job and ate most of our food.
Above, Dan eager to tuck into 4 choc chip pancakes and below, Dan resigned to defeat!
The outlet village was pretty successful, and measured by the bags we loaded back into the van prior to making our daily pilgrimage to Walmart. Our plan is to buy little and often, rather than risk leaving lots of unused items we can bring back to the UK.
Oh and before I forget, I need to mention the armadillo! Once the villa park has settled for the evening and it’s all quiet, if you take a walk around the perimeter of the fence, you can often see an armadillo foraging for food in the grass. The way they search with their nose and front paws reminded me of a hedgehog. And for the uninitiated, they’re probably twice or three times bigger than a hedgehog.
And tomorrow dear reader, we’ll be heading to Disney again for our first entanglement with the “First Order” in Galaxy’s Edge – Disney’s Star Wars land at Hollywood Studios. But for now, I bid you goodnight!