A more mellow day

We decided to take it easy Wednesday before we spent the next two days being really hot and crowded at Magic Kingdom. If we were to ever go back, I think we would plan on one less day and not bother with water parks. We've got Water Country and Great Wolf Lodge around here, so Typhoon Lagoon wasn't all that thrilling. We went on all the family rides first and we gave Shark Reef a try. Papop (my dad) taught Silly to snorkel a few summers ago and he loves it, so we thought we'd give that a try. Cakes and Bubba wanted nothing at all to do with those little bitty sharks. Silly didn't want to swim with sharks either, but he really wanted to snorkel. I snorkeled once in Hawaii and said I would never do it again, but this little pool was like 30 feet across, so I thought maybe that wouldn't be a big deal. Nope. Still a big deal. Still don't like it. Still have a hard time breathing if I think about it too long. Sorry dad! This girl will never be a scuba diver. Ever. Silly was funny. He was swimming along just fine, but at some point he actually saw a fish or a shark and then he just wanted to get out of there. He can say he swam with sharks though!

There was one little kid area that Bubba and I stayed in while Scott took Cakes and Silly to ride the big slides (are you noticing that he takes the big kids a lot? it's because I'm a wimp). He must have gone down that slide 150 times, over and over and over, never getting tired of it. Once we reunited, everyone wanted to go to the wave pool. Now, we know wave pools. We've been in a few. We know the waves start when the bell or alarm rings. But clearly we were not familiar with typhoon pools. We ran into the water right as the alarm sounded, having no idea that this wasn't the typical waves turn on for so many minutes, then off for so many minutes scenario. No, this was just one huge tidal wave that caught Silly completely off guard, tumbling him every which way underwater and battering him into the nonslip surface. Thank goodness he had on a rash guard, because his poor little body would have been completely torn up otherwise. He was pretty scraped up even so. Scott had to take him to the first aid station where they patched him up and gave him lots of extra band-aids. He's a tough kid though, so it didn't really slow him down, but we sure felt bad about it! The ladies at the first aid station were impressed that he managed to scrape something other than his toes, that's what they're usually bandaging.

After a little break at the hotel, we went back out to explore Epcot's World Showcase, but first we had to ride Test Track again because Bubba loved it so much, and gave Mission:Space another try, since that was the first ride we attempted and didn't yet know the trick to getting Bubba on those 44" rides. Scott and I took Bubba on the calmer version and let Cakes and Silly try the wilder one. They take you into this briefing area first and I could not take it! I was on the verge of screaming to be let out and/or hyperventilating. And that wasn't even the ride! Thankfully, there was an opportunity for wimps like me to get out before moving on to the actual ride. Plus, we were worried about Cakes and Silly - they'd gotten too far in front of us and still had their cards with them; we were both worried the cards would be left on the ride and that would be the end of our fun! They were super responsible though and kept track of them.

Then it was time to be piggies traveling the world. We started off with cronuts then visited the UK. Silly gave the classic British phone box a try.

He doesn't even know what a payphone is!

Bubba was more interested in the regular payphone

But he gave the red one a try too

We stopped by France for some sorbet, one of Scott's all-time favorite things. I was expecting the serving size we got in France, forgetting I was in America, so we ended up with these giant waffle cones of sorbet. If I'd known that I would only have bought 1 or 2. Somehow we managed to eat it all. :-)

Cakes jammin'

We ate a few more goodies over in Germany and then finally satisfied Silly's craving for some Chinese noodles at the Lotus Blossom Cafe. That boy could live on any kind of Asian noodle if given the choice.

We mostly just walked through each country, stopped in at a few stores. We did go on the Gran Fiesta Tour in Mexico; that was a nice, cool break from the walking and the heat. Then we stuck around until 9:00 to see the IllumiNations show with lights, fireworks and music. It was pretty cool. We had a good view, but were still towards the back of the crowd so we could make a quick exit. Scott and I seem to have this special snack for beating the rush and we got back to our hotel without any trouble.

And that concludes Day 4. 

Next up: Magic Kingdom!