Aquatica

We are in FLORIDA for our summer vacation. We are staying with our good friends Jen and Kevin and their 6 kids! LUCKILY they have a huge house so there is plenty of room to spread out! We arrived yesterday and just spent time hanging out together and the kids played and played and played.
Today we went to Aquatica. Aquatica is a large Water Park affiliated with Sea World. The weather today was perfect! It was slightly overcast so no beating hot sun and we got a nice downpour in the afternoon to cool us off. Of course at a waterpark you don't mind a little rain, right?
The kids really enjoyed the Lazy River. We rode on giant 2 man innertubes and it took us winding through some very lush scenery and under the dolphin tank, so we were floating right beside the dolphins. The lazy river had 2 exits, one of which led us to... the Twister... or something like that.
The Twister was a large flume that shoots you down into a giant bowl where you spin and spin and spin on your tube until you literally get flushed like a giant toilet into the pool below. I was the only solo rider and on a 2 man boat.....that doesn't work so well. I ended up going backwards down the "drain" and when I hit the pool below my tube flipped me and I went UNDER! It was pretty fun, but I wasn't expecting that. The Twister was Cole's FAVORITE ride.
We also spent some time in the giant wave pool. I think that was my favorite part of the park. I had never been in one before and after the initial fear of drowning was gone, I really enjoyed bobbing up and down and drifting to the back of the pool. The kids loved the wave pool also, especially after we got them life jackets.
We had a little picnic on the beach there as well and that's where the kids buried themselves in the sand. Paige and Tanner were the only ones brave enough to let Megan bury them fully.
We ended the day at the giant water playground. The playground was a like a park on water steroids. It has 6 or 7 water slides suitable in size for the little kids and with life jackets on, Cole and Tanner were able to go down them all by themselves. It also has big buckets of water that fill and fill until they spill over on everyone, lots of tubes to crawl through, swim through, rope walls to walk up, giant squirt guns to shoot... just look the in the background of the pictures below and you will see only 1/2 of that playground. It was a fun day had by all!