I was quite looking forward to today, we were going to visit the newest edition to the Florida adventures, Aquatica, run by Sea World! I managed to rememeber to bring my camera in with me today but didn't take that many photos due to being generally wet all the time!
We got there pretty early and there was already quite a big queue forming, we were expecting it to be busy but there was serious storm predicted for the afternoon so it wasn't as bad as we thought. As soon as we walked in we were awe struck, the theming is amazing! If you've ever been to Sea World and seen/ridden the Atlantic ride the theming is pretty much based like that is, the buildings were very like that and everything else was beach!!
Here's some pictures of the beach
and a shop building thing!
My brother, dad and I were quick to dump our stuff, slop on the sunblock and explore, we decided to go on Aquatica's signature ride first, the Dolphin Plunge where you go through a tank full of commerson dolphins. The queue was already massive so we hastily joined the back and within about 20minutes were at the top waiting to go down. I was so excited about this ride but honestly it's awful! I have never ever gotten claustrophobic but I was nearly in tears and having a panic attack by the time I came out of the slide,the tubes are so thin and so dark it makes you panic so much. I was determined not to close my eyes though as I didn't want to miss the dolphins. As it happened we sped through the 2 second dolphin tank I literally saw daylight and that was it, it was so disappointing.
Here's a picture I took of it after I came off
and here are the dolphins
they have a tank that they swim in which goes to the tubes but when I was there the dolphins were so wary of the tubes and the things going down them they hardly swam by them and if they did it was at lightening speed! I think it's fair judgment to say I was incredibly gutted!!
Still I was determined to try other things out so after I had calmed myself down and got accostomed to the wide open spaces again we headed for the rapids, a firm favourite with my family. We were expecting a lazy river type thing but these were definatly rapids!! They moved fast in some points, swept you one way and the other and were alot of fun! We spent a while swimming around those!
This is the best picture I got!
We soon wore ourselves out and went back to our sun loungers to find mum missing, we suspected that she had got hot and had gone to the wave pool so we headed down there to find her. There are 2 wave pools next to each other which is quite nice but a bit of a pain if you're meeting someone by 'the wave pool'! they're very big and give you clear warning when to go the waves are coming by a giant counter clock on the side of the pool!
We found mum and soon my brother and I were antsy to try other rides so after wandering around a bit and nearly crying at the queue times (like 40mins minimum for many of them) we finally settled on the tube slides, which were amazing!! Here they are in all their glory!
The slides were much biggerand airier and you got to go down on a tube in 2's. We had ALOT of fun! We were practically flying off the bumps!
Soon mum was getting quite bored and hungry as there is much to do if you're a non swimmer at this park, it was starting to get very cloudy so we made our way over to the changing rooms to get dressed and then to get some food. It was getting VERY busy by this time too!
I took this photo walking around, I think the girl thought I was taking it of her!
I don't remember where we ate but it was really nice, sandwich and salad based, as we knew we were having a big tea we only had a light snack(apart from my brother)
My parents both shared this as it was huge!
I had this (which was more filling than it looked!) I was also craving fruit by this point as well, a girl can only have so many burgers!!
My brother who is a complete salad phobe had this:
We walked back to the carparking lot and I realised you could see seaworld!
As we got in the car the heavens opened, it was serious rain! We drove home, had a shower and waited the rain out. When it stopped we piled wandered over to the shopping outlets linked with our hotel and did some major shopping. I bought 2 pairs of shoes and lots of closed! I loved the summer exchange rate!
We spent the best part of the afternoon shopping and were soon hungry again, it had just started to rain too. We drove to TGI Fridays, a definate favourite restaurant of ours both in the UK and USA.
We were seated within about 15minutes and our waiter was hilarious, got to love the waiters!
We ordered a sharer starter, it was delicious!
When we had devoured that we got our mains (with quotes from each person),
I ordered the fajita's ('WOW')
My brother the ribs ('b-e-a-utiful'):
My mum the NY strip steak ('mmmm')- she'd taken the onion rings off the plate!
And dad the sirloin steak ('cooked to perfection')- chips were in another plate!
The food was amazing!! We didn't have room for pudding but it was ok, we didnt want to spoil the taste of our main!
After whiling away 2 hours in TGI's we headed to DTD as the rain had stopped, we generally browsed, I loved this line of minnie mouses!
I bought a stitch
shown here