Today was our one and only visit to a water park, Typhoon Lagoon, again included in our Disney ticket price. Like everything else in Walt Disney World the water parks are beautifully themed and dressed.
Before we could get in the water and test the rides we had to dump our stuff. Previously the lockers had worked on a deposit basis and you could choose to either have your money back at the end of got a really nice (cheap) plastic mug. You also got a waterproof band with a key and the number of your locker. Perfect. This has now been replaced with a human free system where you have have to pay a non-returnable $15 (FIFTEEN DOLLARS!!) for the locker. Better still they now provide you with a printed receipt with a reminder of the locker number. Fat lot of use that is in a water park!
Lockers negotiated (I say lockers but at $15 we made damn sure that everything squeezed into one) we set off to find the family raft ride. Shockingly this had been replaced with something similar but instead of climbing a tower you now were glided to the top in your rubber dinghy on a travelator. They’re a lazy lot the Americans.
As we were riding on said travelator a voice came over the tannoy “Please put at least one hand thru the loop” then a few seconds later the message was repeated. At this point both the boys put a hand through the loop and were rewarded with a “Thank you”! You are being watched it seems.
We then went back to the villa where the regulations on leaving your house to go in your pool are strict. Tamper with the pool alarm and you get a year in prison. I’m sure you’d get less for shooting someone.
In the evening it was back out to Animal Kingdom, via Disney Springs for dinner at the House of Blues.
The reason we were back at Animal Kingdom was two fold. Firstly we wanted to see Pandora at night as it was supposed to be lit up and secondly we want to try and get on the Flights of Passage ride once more.
We waited until the Disney app showed that the wait time had come down from 120 to 90 minutes before attempting to join the queue. The queue was a lot longer than last time and even longer than the one in our local post office, if you can believe such a thing! However, like before, it only took us half the time to reach the front and get on the ride. It was well worth the wait too as it is great.
Once out we walked around taking in the lit up landscape before going over to our last fast pass of the day at the Safari. We hadn’t been in the evening before and I wondered what it would be like in the dark. It was pretty much as you can imagine – difficult to see the animals that had bothered to make an appearance. Still was a bit different.
Finally, we made our way out to the park exit where we had agreed to meet the boys. As we were leaving we saw that there was a show being projected onto the Tree of life, the enormous tree that dominates the centre of the park, so we stopped to watch that too.
So it was a good evening spent in a relatively quiet park and an opportunity to do some new things.