Here Now! first WDW family holiday - Day 1 Typhoon Lagoon

[scottishnellie]

So having managed to stay up late, and keep the kids up I was hoping we would be on Florida time come morning. No chance. Our family is split in half with sleepers (Kevin and Hannah) and non-sleepers (Kieran and I) and this morning was to be no different!

I woke at 2.30am and tried desperately to get back to sleep. I then heard Kieran getting up at 2:50 and knew straight away that the game was indeed a-bogey. Tried to get him to go back to bed but there he was wide awake, assuring me he could not sleep a wink, and given I was the same I could not exactly argue. So there we were, sitting at the dining room table together at 3am, him colouring in his Disney book while I typed up my travel day trip report.

By 5:30 he was begging to go in the pool. I managed to put him off until 6am as I was worried he would wake the others. Fat chance! Kevin got up at 7:30 while Hannah had to be woken at 9am! She threw a bagel and some cornflakes down her neck and headed straight into the pool with Kieran. After all the thunder and lightning last night it was a gloriously warm and sunny day.

Todays plan was, well, not really to have a plan to be honest. With this being our first time we had no idea how we would feel on our first morning, so had loosely planned Aquatica. We all agreed we did indeed want to do a water park but I decided it was not
to be Aquatica. We have Discovery Cove booked for 25th, which if we started the clock on our tickets today the DC would be our 14th day. Should be fine I know, but last nights lightning made me wonder if we should leave them a few days so IF we get cancelled for bad weather on 25th we still have a few days validity left incase that would cause any problem.

So, being newbies with no preference we plumped for Typhoon Lagoon purely as it looked like a more direct route to drive. Left at 10:30 and were there by 11. The kids were so excited driving into Disney and parking up. We went straight through the gate and headed for the lockers. Rented a large locker for $15 ($5 dollars of which was returnable when the key went back). It just fitted our 1 full backpack and 1 half empty one and no more.

Off we went with towels to find somewhere to settle. There were no beds to be found but plenty of chairs. I eventually spotted one lone bed that someone had vacated so went for that. It was just to the side of the entrance to the big wave pool. I would love to tell you that I bravely rode all the slides and crashed around the wave pools all day but I would be lying. I did a tourey round the lazy river, and I ducked into the wave pool to cool off and laugh at the kids surfing the big wave a few times. Water slides are not really my thing. I am not fond of a facefull of water and for some reason I always seem to go down the damn things 10 times faster than anyone else and come coughing and spluttering out the other end. I err, think its something to with the surface area of my derrière. So in between these forays into the water I sat at the side, enjoyed the heat on my skin and people watched. It was boiling hot.

Having read about the rough floor of the wave pool I had made sure the kids had aqua shoes, but even with these Kieran got a couple of huge scrapes on his knee. When the kids came back at one point with Kieran all battle scarred I took them to buy Dippin Dots. Kieran had strawberry but then swapped for my banana, and hannah had cookies and cream, $4.99 each. Kevins not into sweet stuff so none for him. Safe to say the rest of us will be having those again though – yum! Later in the afternoon we tried frozen lemonade and strawberry lemonade cups. Nice, but not in the same league as Dippin Dots!

Kieran really started to flag at 3pm so we decided to leave, eat, and head back to the villa. By the time we got to the lockers to dry and change Kieran was begging to go straight home, his 3am start catching up with him. We got to the car and by the time we left the car park he was snoring his head off in the back seat. We stopped at McDonalds to pick something up for Kevin and Hannah to eat then back to the villa. Kevin carried Kieran into his bed and we agreed to wake him at 6 to try to get him awake and out for dinner.

I did some more washing and put away this mornings clean washing then had a long hot shower.

Hannah spent her time facetiming her friends and showing them around the villa!

We woke Kieran at 6 and managed to get him showered and dressed. Decided to go for an Indian at a place called Dhaba up off the US27. I had a $50 groupon for it and Kieran loves a curry so we thought this would pep him up. Yeah. He managed to stay awake for his first course of pakora then he rolled his eyes and keeled to the side before his tandoori shrimp main hit the plate! We all enjoyed ours but at one point Kevin was eating one handed while holding Kierans head up with his other hand. Hannah and I had sweetcorn soup and the boys had chicken pakora which was more like chicken tempura. Hubby had chicken bhuna, I had chicken korma, Hannah had chicken saag, and Kieran almost had tandoori shrimp. We had to spend $100 to use the coupon so because the starters were around $4 and the mains averaged $15-18 we used the rest up in beer for Kevin. We obviously could not stick around for dessert so we paid the bill (with the $50 off it was $50.29) and took his shrimp to go. Outside the thunder and lightning was back and it was tipping it down again.

Back at the villa now for some chilling as we have a very big day tomorrow.

Checking into All Star Sports for the night, with our first day at Magic Kingdom! 😄