Today we visited our first water park of the holiday, Typhoon Lagoon. Typhoon Lagoon is a Disney water park and as you’d expect really large. Most water parks we’ve been to previously have had a wave machine pool, however they tend to run only at specific times during the day. The wave pool at Typhoon Lagoon ran all day long and the waves were bigger and more powerful than we’d experienced previously.

There were only twelve different rides at the park, with the exception of the kiddie rides we tried all of them. They were good but not as good as Siam Park in Tenerife, which we visited last year.

We stayed at the park for a few hours, enjoying the really short queues due to our early arrival. We’ve observed that the earlier you arrive the shorter the queues. (Grandpe would probably not be able to take advantage of good fortune as he’d probably arrived with the main crowd!)

One of the highlights of this park was swimming with fish, sharks and rays. We were given a snorkel and goggles. After being instructed what to do and not to do we climbed onto the ledge. Although we stood in only two foot of salt water it was freezing cold, a real shock when we were so warm. We launched ourselves off the shelf and into a 10 foot fish pool. We floated over from one side to the other and saw a few fish. Matty was away from us and the main group and saw the most.

We left the park at lunch time, ate our sandwich in the car park whilst talking about where we would spend the afternoon. We had planned to take in the night parade and fireworks at Magic Kingdom and so didn’t want to go too far away. We returned to the hotel, showered (Luke tried the spa bath, drinking his Dr Pepper with the bubbles on “full tilt” he looked like Lord Muck!)

We decided to head for Florida Mall a half hour drive away, where we would be able to find Dick’s Sporting Goods (stop laughing Sophie). The boys hated the massive sport shop which majored on pretty much every sport. You know but don’t really appreciate how big baseball and American Football are until you see how many square feet of retail space they allotted to each sport. Both took more floor space than the basketball area which I found amazing. The number of different baseball bats you can get is staggering. Thin ones, thick ones, training ones, match ones, pro match ones, the list seemed endless!
The boys tried on different baseball caps but decided not to get one as I pointed out we were in quite an expensive shop. They have been given a small budget to spend on an item/items of their choice, however if they spend it all on day one they’ve been told they might see something else they prefer and will be unable to swap. Even on holiday Dad is being boring and giving them a lesson in money management! It seems to work though, both Matty and Luke were right on the button working out what they’d have left and the fact that the small surplus they’d have could prevent other purchases they may prefer.

Whilst in the Mall it tipped it down, which was good as we try our best to dodge the rain showers. Getting some petrol on the way home from the mall proved an adventure, the petrol pump was a festival of buttons and number pads and other choices all connected with a display screen. It made our pay-at-pump systems in the UK look really basic and simplistic. I asked the guy next to me how it all worked. He showed me how to use the pump and then looked at the car we were with. Looking down his nose (or being kind to us) he said I’d not bother with anything but the 87 unleaded. This was $2.48/gallon, so a full tank was $23!!!