CeruleanMoon
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- May 3, 2017
Friday, April 27 2018 - Typhoon Lagoon
Weather - Sunny, mid 80’s
Weather - Sunny, mid 80’s
Typhoon Lagoon is a beautiful park and easily the best waterpark I have ever visited.
We chose TL over Blizzard Beach for several reasons. Probably the number one reason was that we come from a place with some of the highest snowfall averages in the country. So a park that features even MORE snow made us want to run the other way screaming! We were really ready for some tropical theming! Quinn and I also spent some time checking out the different slides at each park and we decided that the slides we were most interested in were at TL.
Our original goal was to try and get there around park opening at 10 am, but by the end of the week we were getting a bit tired and so we ended up waltzing into the park sometime around 11:30 instead.
Inside we found an almost empty park!
Matt’s not a huge fan of water rides, so we got him set up on a nice lounge chair and then Quinn and I left to check out the lazy river. I like lazy rivers. I like floating down a little stream, occasionally getting misted with some cool water, it’s all good. What I don’t like is when parks think they need to add thunderous waterfalls and water sprays that shoot out with the force of bullets. Overall I’d give TL’s lazy river a 9, because it is very long and meanders through some beautiful scenery. I had to take away one point however because at one spot I was forced under a waterfall that pelted me with such power that my chest actually felt bruised afterwards. Ouch!
After getting soaked on the lazy river Quinn and I went down Keelhaul Falls and Mayday Falls, two raft rides next to each other. I think we did Mayday Falls first, which was the river rapids slide, which bounces you around. I seem to have bad luck on this type of slide. Every time I have gone on one, I end up facing backwards fairly early on in the ride, which I find distracting and never as much fun. Same thing happened this time, and I managed to bump my foot along the walls somehow as well, which is kind of a mystery since people much taller than me ride this all the time! A fine slide, but not my favorite.
I enjoyed Keelhaul much better. It was a smooth, winding ride. Both slides had virtually no wait!
Gankplank Falls was a group ride, so we headed back to get Matt. First though we got distracted exploring the pathways in the park, some of which wound through caves. Everything here is so well themed, the entire park was like one giant queue line with something entertaining to look at around every corner.
We stopped at an overlook where you could watch the giant wave pool.
The wave pool here does one gigantic, tsunami-sized wave every 90 seconds. Well, maybe it’s not really tsunami-sized but it sure feels like it when one is raging towards you!
This panoramic photo actually shows a kind of time lapse as one wave makes its way down the pool. In reality, subsequent waves never come that close together.
It was kind of fun watching people get knocked down like bowling pins!
So once we pulled Matt out of his comfy chair we headed to Gangplank Falls. We encountered a woman ahead of us with a toddler who the CM was not letting on the ride. Apparently this ride requires a minimum of 3 people in a raft and a maximum of 4, so pretty tight requirements. She was stuck waiting for another party of two to come along. Given that the park was fairly empty that day, I wonder how long she had to wait?
On this ride, I took my waterproof camera.
Rides usually start out with happy faces! No one knows what they are in for yet.
Uh-oh, what’s that ahead?
Guys, why are you looking at me like that? Am I headed right for a waterfall or something?
It got me! Waterfalls: 2; Me: 0.
We enjoyed Gangplank Falls!
After this it was heading into mid-afternoon and we were getting hungry. We walked to the other side of the park to look for a quick service place. We ended up at Typhoon Tilly’s. I think I had some kind of chicken sandwich. They had a lot of good choices. Even though the park was starting to pick up a little, they still had plenty of open tables.
After lunch we headed to Typhoon Lagoon’s newest ride, Miss Adventure Falls!
This ride has a feature that I wish all slides could have - a conveyor belt that takes you, in your tube, from the bottom of the slide to the top!
At the top of the conveyor belt is an ominous tunnel…
Unfortunately, my photos of this ride end here! I guess I must have been too busy holding on! This ride is longer than Gangplank, and if I remember correctly, a little more twisty. We had a blast! The tubes hold a large number of people, 6 maybe? You could have a whole party in there!
Next we went to Crush ‘n Gusher, the park’s only water coaster!
This slide goes UP hills as well as down!
Crush ‘n Gusher is actually three slides, all very similar, and you get to choose which one you ride. Single riders are limited to only one slide, perhaps to keep the line under control, but double riders can ride any of the three. You have to carry your big double tube up all those stairs yourself! I wish we could have gotten a count of how many miles we walked today, but we didn’t carry our phones around on us, so we could only guess. I bet we walked at least 5 miles, maybe more, around the park.
Most of the miles were probably on this ride! I think we went on it a million times. It was our favorite in the park!
We convinced Matt to ride it a few times too.
I think we could have easily just ridden this ride alone until park closing, but we wanted to try the wave pool and Miss Adventure Falls again.
Oh here it comes...Matt hurry up and take the picture!!
Hold onto your kids if you ever want to see them again! Here comes the wave of DOOM.
Here it comes again…Watch Matt in the middle of the picture.
Going...
Going...
Gone!
Finally, it was time to go home.
It’s 5 o’clock somewhere...and that means closing time at Typhoon Lagoon. :-(
We could have easily stayed much longer!
To get here we took a Lyft, but on the way back we decided to treat ourselves to one final Minnie Van ride. We ended up waiting almost an hour for the van to arrive! Turns out, while we were waiting on one side of the parking lot, the other side was rapidly filling up with cast members, who had some special event going on at TL. Our driver got stuck in traffic and it took him the full hour just to reach us! We also discovered that there is a special spot you are supposed to wait for Minnie Vans, but there were no signs leading us there, so we had no idea. The parking lot is lined with empty bus stops, leftover I assume, from a time when busses ran to and from the park from all the resorts. We picked one at random and waited and waited and waited. Then we saw our van waaaay far away, stopping and talking to another group of people, so we ran to go catch it, just in case it was about to take off without us! That’s when the driver told us that we were supposed to be waiting at the farthest bus stop out.
We got in and drove past the entrance again, where a HUGE line of CMs was streaming into the park! Looks like the night was going to be much more crowded than the day was!
After Typhoon Lagoon, we got back to our room and just felt like relaxing. Quinn and I made sandwiches from the last of our grocery stash and Matt ordered some kind of tex-mex monstrosity made out of french fries. It came on a very fancy tray, surrounded by a dome just like in the movies.
Matt took this picture after picking out all the onions and giant jalapenos! He’ll eat tiny jalapenos, but once they are bigger they start to look like actual vegetables and that’s a no-no! Once the onions and peppers were removed, I think Matt enjoyed his dinner very much. It smelled delicious!
Total miles walked for the week: ~40!
Next up...Departure Day. :-(
