Excerpts from Blizzard Beach

[Dawn]

Jeremiah woke me up at 6.50am. I’d managed to sleep for 10 hours. I can’t remember the last time that happened; certainly not since he was born that’s for sure. Wow! And even more wow, no one else was up yet. I made some coffee – for me, not the boy – and we sat dangling our legs in the pool having a bizarre conversation about grapefruit and the different colours you could get. It was all above my knowledge level as the boy has a scientific mind and I ...well I have a history degree so suffice to say he out conversed me on the relative merits of grapefruit varieties.

Gradually more beings joined us around the pool for breakfast. We noticed that the water level in the pool had dropped and wondered aloud if we had to do something about this or whether the mysterious pool man we’d heard about would fix it for us. As luck would have it there was a hosepipe attached to the wall by the pool and after a lot of fiddling about with the controls on the timer (history degree remember) I finally managed to get water to come out of the end of it. I stuck the hose in the pool and got on with sitting.
Auntie Jo appeared from the bathroom and announced to us all that if you eat green sherbet your poo turns green. Jeremiah was gutted by this an immediately went off to have a try as he had been diligently consuming the blue stuff each day and so far...nothing. Well there had been something, if you get my drift, but it definitely wasn’t blue.

After a breakfast of Captain Crunch peanut butter crunchy things and the morning ritual of smothering ourselves in sunscreen, Mr A, Jeremiah and myself were in the car and headed off to Blizzard Beach to give the boy his first experience of a water park. The closest he’s ever got to this is the local pool which has a few squirty bits and a splashy bit and three of the smallest flumes I’ve ever seen. So he’s looking forward to this.

On the way to the park we see one of those planes doing the sky-writing against the blue Florida sky. It wrote: TRUST JESUS, U + GOD = So now we had to do the religious discussion on top of the grapefruit discussion. We told the boy about different religions and some of their aspects and how we much respect peoples’ religious beliefs. As we pulled into the parking lot for Blizzard Beach the boy concludes the discussion by announcing that we must be Christians as we eat pigs and cows.

The three of us leave the finer points of religion in the parking lot and head through the turnstiles into Blizzard Beach. At the first chance we sort out a rental locker for the day. This turns out to be the main gift shop where the boy is immensely excited to see they have the tubes of coloured stuff here too. We manage to persuade him that leaving this for on the way out would be better and we walk round the park to locate our locker. Having rented a large locker I would be really interested in seeing the dimensions of a small locker because this thing was smaller than any locker you use at a UK swimming pool. After a lot of pushing and shoving we manage to squeeze our towels and bits into this thing and get the door shut, though it threatens to burst open and spray passers by with factor 50 at any moment. Seriously it’s the only thing in the US labelled “Large” that comes up short on the description.

First thing we wanted to try was Teamboat Springs. This is a family raft attraction-ride. Getting to it meant taking the ski lift to the top of the “mountain.” Jeremiah was a bit unsure about this but after watching a few go up and convincing him that he wouldn’t fall out we made the journey. The line for the journey down was very short and soon we were in our raft and on our way. Jeremiah was not happy at first but once he’d realised we weren’t falling to our doom he decided to enjoy the ride.

At the bottom was a Disney photographer so we got the obligatory family photo looking all wet and dishevelled and added it to a photopass card, which incidentally are on convenient wristbands in the water parks.

Next up was a bit of lazing around on a tube while we floated around the lazy river. This was fine until we set off because; well why do all our tubes float at different speeds? Yes I know it’s shallow and there are lifeguards every 3.5cm but Jeremiah is not a strong swimmer yet and will panic if he loses sight of us. Our relaxing float around turned into more of a “stop every 100 metres and wait for the others to catch up” kind of deal.

Still the river bought us round to more attractionride things so we ditched our tubes and climbed out. Runoff Rapids was next which had a bit of a wait but still only around 10 minutes. Jeremiah rode on a double with Mr A and I flew solo. Then we reversed the seating arrangements for a second trip down. After this we chilled out a bit in the wave pool doing a bit of bobbing around and seeing how close we could get to the back wall without a lifeguard having to shot into their plastic traffic cone.

[josh.p.]

I can't wait to read the whole thing

[mumof2]

aww I was really getting into it...want more now please

[Suebeattie]

I agree, need to see how the rest of the day went now !!! Have you done any other excerpts?

[Dawn]

Will try and do a bit more today but I have chemistry homework to fit in too.

[Kate]

Sounds like auntie jo had done a bit of research into the green sherbert poo thingy!
Oh we saw that god = thing. However, when i saw it i was laying on a sunlounger and the first few letters had started to disperse, so i thought it said food = and took a photo, a few days later we saw the rest of it, imo the food one was better!

Have enjoyed reading this one, hope there are plenty more to come!!

[Hex]

Sounds like auntie jo had done a bit of research into the green sherbert poo thingy!

Auntie Jo was on so many painkillers and other medication for her back that it was a surprise it was just green, and not some weirdly glowing tartan patterned thing ...

[Kate]

Auntie Jo was on so many painkillers and other medication for her back that its was a surprise it was just green, and some some weirdly glowing tartan patterned thing ...

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwww, thats gross!!!!