Blizzard Beach – Thursday 26th April

As part of our tickets in 1999, the 5 day hopper pass included 2 days in the Disney water parks. I thought that these tickets expired after 14 days of the first use, but when I contacted Disney they told me that there was a water parks day left on each ticket. We had also checked at guest services in Magic Kingdom the night before as the water parks tickets didn’t show in our account on the app. The woman there could see them so we thought we’d make the most of a ‘free’ day out.

We didn’t get there until around 11am and were surprised that the car park was very quiet.

After entering the park we went to locker rental to store our valuables for the day. A small locker cost $10 per day and a large one $15. We then set off to find sun beds.

The ones near the entrance were already taken but the further we walked the more beds were available. We managed to get 3 together plus 3 chairs under a permanent sunshade and had no-one else sharing it with us.

Bethany and I went to check out the lazy river. Here it was known as Cross Country Creek. When we had been before we had had to wait ages for empty float rings to come free but there were loads just constantly floating passed. It showed just how quiet it really was.

We ended up doing a full circuit of the park which took 30 minutes. Part of it went through a tunnel where water fell from the ceiling keeping us cool.

We then decided to do a couple of the chutes. The first one was Toboggan Racers, an eight lane straight slide which you had to ride head first on a mat. We then went on the slalom course – Snow Stormers – which we also had to ride head first on a mat. This was faster and rougher but good fun.

Next we decided to take the chair lift to the top of the mountain and do the raft ride down – Teamboat Springs. We managed to jump the queue a bit as there had to be a minimum of 4 people in the raft and there were groups of 4 or 5 in front of us but a group of 3 at the front of the queue. We were called forward to join a mum and her two small children. It was a great ride with steep banking at the sides. Afterwards we took Cross Country Creek back to our sunbeds.

After a quick break for lunch we persuaded Michael to join us on Cross Country Creek followed by the chairlift and raft rapids again. This time it was even faster as were were 4 adults with Bethany.

By now it was 3:45pm and they had started announcing that they were closing soon. The water parks were only open from 10am to 5pm. As we were heading back to our sunbeds via the lazy river Bethany and I decided to go on the chutes that we hadn’t been on – Runoff Rapids. This involved sitting in a shaped inner tube and holding on to the handles. There were two slides – one open and one closed. We both decided to go on the open slide. There was a huge pile of inner tubes to pick up from, showing again how quiet it was. There was also no wait at the top so we were also able to get straight on and slide down.

After another short trip on the lazy river we went back to our sun beds to dry off and collect our towels and clothes.

It was also possible to rent a Polar Patio which was a private area with seats, sunshades and a cooler or rent an area on the private beach with 2 sun loungers, 2 chairs and a sun shade. This would be a great option for when the park is busy.

As we had been to a Disney water park during the day, we thought we would go and eat at Disney Boardwalk in the evening.

As we arrived the car park was almost full, which didn’t bode well. We had a walk along the boardwalk and tried a couple of the restaurants but they all had a wait of a least an hour so we decided to try elsewhere.

The last time we visited the USA we had eaten a couple of times at Applebee’s and so we decided to see if there was one locally. There was! It was almost in our way home. We drove there and got a table immediately.

There was plenty of choice in the menu and we all found something we liked the look of.