Our Saturday Part 1: Aquatica

Ok, back to our regularly scheduled program as promised!  Sorry it took so long to get around to posting about our day on Saturday at the Sea World parks----but, like I said, last night we were EXHAUSTED and today we actually kept ourselves pretty busy...but I'm getting ahead of myself...I'll have to post about our day today a little later on.

So let's start with Aquatica.....
 Now, as far as we know, Aquatica is one of the newer attractions here in Orlando.  It either was not there the last time we went to Sea World...or we totally missed it (which is possible, but not all that probable).  Anyhow...Aquatica is the waterpark owned and operated by(and across the street from) Sea World.  Jason and I are not HUGE water park fans----like we rarely go to them when we're not down here on vacation...but Disney has two waterparks that are both fun, so we thought we'd give this one a try.  To put the end of the story at the beginning...we really, really enjoyed Aquatica a lot.  We arrived right about when it opened at 9am and we left at about 3pm to head over to "real" Sea World (see my next blog post for details on that part of our day).  Aquatica is very different from the Disney water parks...but great in its own way. Disney has the better theme-ing at their parks down pat (Typhoon Lagoon is very tropical and Blizzard Beach is decorated to look like a melting ski resort).  That said, however, Aquatica is a very colorful and fun park and just the right
size----not too spread out so it feels like an insane walk from attraction to attraction but also big enough to spend the better part of the day in.



As you can see in the artist's rendering of the image I posted above, there are a number of different kinds of slides and play areas.  We didn't spend time in the kids play areas (because we didn't have any kids with us....but it was BIG and very

intricate and loud....and at a water park, loud kids is usually a good sign, right? LOL)  Beyond that, we rode everything at least once.  The slides are pretty standard:  tube slides, covered slides, open slides, a group raft ride, toboggan-type slides....the large slide that dumps you in a huge basin that you swirl around into the drain in the center (like you're being flushed down a toilet LOL) that has become very popular at many water parks.  Most of these were fun----nothing extraordinary but not disappointing either.

Our pic entering the park.

The one novel slide that Aquatica has to offer (and that I was very much looking forward to) is called the "Dolphin Plunge."  It is literally a slide twisting tube slide that a section of which is clear and runs right through a large porpoise tank they have (the dolphins here are not bottle-nose "Flipper" dolphins...they actually look a lot more like really tiny killer whales).  The gimmick here is supposed to be that you are sliding THROUGH the dolphin tank and can see the dolphins swimming around your.  This is a picture I took through the underwater viewing area of the slides.  If you look closely in the upper left at the entrance of the slide you can see a dark spot---that's a person entering the slide.....and in the lower right corner you can see one of the dolphins (white belly and black flippers) is swimming right under the tube (it's belly is facing you).  I was very excited for this slide because I love anything involving animals and/or sea life----zoos, aquariums, animal parks, all of it.  I must say, however, that while the idea behind this slide is fantastic, the actual result is a bit disappointing.  The slide itself is fun, but by the time you get to the clear section in the dolphin pool you are moving so fast and so much water has been splashed in your face that you are entirely blind and could be sliding right into the mouth of Jaws and you wouldn't know it! LOL   Oh well....

So the slides didn't change my life....but the park itself was still nice.  We thoroughly enjoyed the lazy river.  Here are some pics:

The lazy river goes beneath a large African Cichlid aquarium which is a cool effect.

Aren't we cute all wet? :)

We also enjoyed an attraction they had called "Roa's Rapids." Imagine a lazy river only about 3 times as fast.  There are no tubes---you either get in and just swim or you don a life vest and you let the fast current carry you around.  This was probably our favorite thing at the park and we spent a fair amount of time in it.  Here are some pics of us before getting in and while we were coasting along:

And then, of course, no water park would be complete without a wave pool.  Here are a few pics of us enjoying the wave pool:

I don't actually know how much Jason is "enjoying" the wave pool in this picture....but it makes me laugh! LOL

me lounging about

Jason lounging, as well.

The final thing I'll say about Aquatica is about the best find we had of the day:  the private cabana.  Our friend, Sandi, had warned me that shade was hard to come by at this park and so to bring sunscreen (although we saw umbrellas everywhere and there seemed to be plenty of shade...so maybe they have improved that since she was there last).  I was online before our trip researching the park and saw that they rent a very limited number of private cabanas that provide shade and other amenities...and since I knew we didn't want to burn (even though we both did a little anyway LOL), I decided to go ahead and shell out the bucks to rent one.  It wasn't cheap (like $100 for the cabana----but we could have had up to 4 guests in it at that price...so it really boils down to $25/person).  Once we arrived and were shown to our cabana, however, we were SO glad we had done it.  The caban was a tent structure off in a private area of the park that you had to have a wrist band to enter.  It had a ceiling fan and private lounge chairs, a refrigerator stocked with 16 soft drinks (water, sodas and juice/punch) and two lockers/cabinets----one that locked and the other that did not.  The one that didn't lock was the size of a dresser drawer and easily stored our shoes, etc. The one that did lock was 3 times the size of the lockers they were renting out for $5 a piece to people who didn't have a cabana----so all our stuff was secured in a safe and central location and we had someplace to get out of the sun and relax.  In addition, because we had a cabana, we got 25% all merchandise including photograph packages in the park.  Here are some pics of our cabana:

Me eating lunch in our cabana

If we ever visit Aquatica again in the future....we will DEFINITELY invest in a cabana again...and I would recommend it to anyone else who goes and can afford it!

Us at the end of the day posing in front of a statue of the Aquatica "mascot" characters.

(For those of you paying attention...you will also note that while I did originally threaten not to post any pics of us because we didn't want pictures of us without shirts on floating about the internet...I managed to create a whole post, very rich in images, without once showing our bellies or belly buttons!! LOL)