We left off after the tour of POP heading back to the room to gather everything together and head to a water park for today. What's going on at the resort today?
Which water park shall we go to?
If you followed along on the TR from last summer, you'll know we went to Blizzard Beach last year and used some days from old passes. So this time we opted to go to TL. We had 1 day of water park fun left on one of those same old passes.
Good thing, because when I saw the price of a one day pass to a water park, I almost changed my mind!
Even with the passholder discount, those tickets were $52.19 per person.
We arrived to the gates just after 11am and (after I choked on the price) purchased the other 3 tickets and rented a $15 locker (so nice of them to give me $5 back at the end of the day).
Most of the loungers at the front of the park were full. The CMs told us to head around by Shark Reef-lots of open space in that area.
The boys couldn't drop their stuff fast enough. Thankfully, I had brought 1 beach towel from home (with my hospital logo on it making our spot easy to see) as the only way to get a towel at the water parks is to rent them!
DH and I did a photo tour of the water park before locking everything away and heading out to the slides for our own fun. Come on along!!
We meant to come back to swim with the sharks, but never got around to it.
This was a photo of shark reef, but after reviewing the photos, I had to wonder what was going on here?
I guess (s)he thought a bra matched well with those board shorts?
Let's continue with our tour, shall we?
That's the end of the great photo shoot. Time to put the camera away and go have some fun! We had to check out Crushin' Gusher!! Great time! We hit some of the tube slides and the family raft ride. The lines weren't too bad for most of the slides. I recall the raft ride having the longest line of the day. We cruised the lazy river and, around 2pm, decided it was time to grab some lunch.
We went to the Leaning Palms and ordered a hot dog kids meals with bottled water, 2 cheeseburgers, an order of fries, and a turkey sandwich kids meal, and 2 diet cokes. (we had a refillable mug, but their bar code readers weren't working at some of the stations). Total $40.20 for lunch. The tables were rather crowded and a nice family let us join them at their table. Once they were done, we invited another family with 2 girls to join us. We all had great visits with one another. The family with the girls lived in the area and were just out for the day. We gave our sandpails from our kids meals to the girls to use for the rest of the day and headed back out to continue our fun.
We headed back to the wave pool. DH and I swam out to wait for the big wave. What we thought would be a 10 min wait for the big wave wasn't!!
We got the smaller rolling waves first. We stayed out there treading water and back floating another 30 min waiting on the big wave! Let's just say, that one big wave was it for me! It carried me all the way in to shore. Then the next wave followed it and knocked my glasses clean off my head (I did have one of those straps attached to keep them on my head). I thought I was doomed. Then the kid walking next to me said "ooh" and I knew he had just stepped on them.
Luckily they weren't too badly damaged (just really loose in the arms) and I did have an old pair along which I ended up using for the rest of the trip.
About 5:30 a nice little storm came rolling in and the CMs had to clear the pools. We waited it out and had a nice conversation with one of the lifeguards there on her College Program. Around 6:30, the slides reopened and it was much less crowded. No waits for the tube slides so we hit them all again. We stayed through closing. I got the stuff out of the locker around 7:40pm (while the boys finished their last trip through the wave pool) and collected my deposit from Singapore Sals. And then we headed back off to the bus.
We were back to the resort shortly after 8pm. The boys were hungry and headed off to Everything POP for food. Meanwhile, DH said he would hang with the boys at the resort while I took the evening to go do something fun by myself!!!
Guess where I decided to go?
I saw the giraffe hiding behind the tree (I never miss a giraffe).
We wandered over to check out some Dinosaurs stopping for a snack (Itzakadoozis for the boys and some water for the big people). The line for Dino was over 20 min and out the door. We opted to skip it and head back to the resort to shower and change for dinner.
That would be the reason for "free dining" if you are one who likes to eat in the buffets or nicer restaurants. Or the reason for counter service dining when you opt to take the room only discount. 
Enjoying your TR! I thought I was crazy for doing two trips a month apart; sounds like yours were even closer together! Can't wait to hear about it all!
Glad to have a new person following along. Lots more to come!
A great hide for the 80s staircases. 
Time was getting away from them and the boys wanted to get going to the waterpark!!!
FYI the boys, once again, had a wonderous meal of cheese pizza and chocolate chip cookies. 
), but I finished them up and moved on. 
