paul riley

After a busy day on Monday at the Animal Kingdom, and because we had promised the kids, we decided that Tuesday we would take the kids to one of the two water parks at Disney World. Looking through the guide books we had with us, it seemed that Typhoon Lagoon was the less extreme park of the two and the one most suited to younger children, so we may the park our destination for the day.

Walt Disney World Resort - Disney's Typhoon Lagoon Water Park

On arriving at the park the first difference you find from the main theme parks is that the car parking is free, I suspect that this is intended as a mechanism ensure that the park does not get too over crowded. The next difference is that because the car park is smaller that the main park car parks there are no trams shuttling you to and from you car.

As with the entrances at the main parks there is a bag check and then the turn styles, and once through you follow the footpath up and over a small hill to the main changing/lockers area, keys for the lockers are paid for at the gift shop. Read More...

Day two started slowly, we had already decided that we wouldn't put any pressure on ourselves by trying to get to the parks at the earliest opportunity. I had overheard another tourist last night who, when told he would have to return to the welcome centre on the first morning to register, complain that his family had planned to be at the gates to the Magic Kingdom for when they opened, I'm sorry as far as I am concerned I am on holiday, not running a marathon, and intend to enjoying the experience. That said we did have plans, first we would get the guest registration out the way, then have breakfast, pop into Walmart, and then back to the villa for lunchtime, the afternoon would arrange itself around how we felt after that.

So once we were all up, washed and dressed we headed out to the Welcome centre, the journey there demonstrated just how tired we were because in the mornings light we found that the seemed far shorter than it had the night before. The process of registering was quick, probably because we had no issues to raise, and the reps were very informative, although there is an element of soft sell for a timeshare at a local none Disney resort, and soon we were looking for a place to have breakfast.

Although this was my first time to the States, and the kids first overseas holiday of any sort, we as a group weren't complete novices, Elizabeth had been as a teenager, and again about 8 years ago, so she acted as our information source on things such as restaurants. She explained that when she had come as a teenager the family religiously had breakfast at Denny's as the food and service had been so good, so we looked out for the first Denny's we could find along highway 192. The 192 either side of interstate 4 is an unofficial tourist area, presumably a result of the location of the main entrance to Disney World, and consists mainly of hotels, restaurants, gift shops and ticket stores.

We found a Denny's quite quickly, and had no problem getting a table even though it seemed relatively busy. Looking around the restaurant I would describe it as functional and reminded me a bit of a Little Chief, except a lot larger. The service we received was higher than you'd get at Little Chief but a bit disappointing compared to other places you could choose to eat at in this area. The quality of the food was good, and servings plentiful, however I suspect that in the same way that we in Britain do not eat full English breakfasts every day, the breakfasts we ate were not representative of what the average American eats every day. All in all I think we left this Denny's restaurant a bit disappointed, but we decided that we will try a different one later in the holiday before making a final decision on the restaurant chain.

Feeling replete from breakfast we then moved on to Walmart, which to the uninitiated is the company that owns the Asda chain of supermarkets back home, and their stores are HUGE. You can buy pretty much anything from milk to clothing, baby seats to tv's, pain killers to guns, you'd be hard put to find something they don't sell. Our reason for going was two fold, firstly we needed to stock up on provisions for the villa, and days out at the theme parks, the second a solution to a worry I think most families visiting Disney probably have.

So what's the problem?, you may ask. Well the problem is what do you do if as a family, in a busy theme park, you get separated? Having a predefined rallying point works to a certain extent, but often being able to contact each other can relieve the stresses and worries. At first you might consider taking you UK mobiles with you, and I did take mine, but only to enable home to contact us in the event of emergencies, if you have used your mobile outside the EU you will know how expensive it can be. I know that until recently walkie-talkie radios have been popular, the problem here is that the frequencies that these radios use in the US is different in the UK. Then we browsed the Walmart website and found that pre-paid mobile phones are cheep, and I mean really cheep, this is also starting to be the popular alternative to the radios with British tourists.

So when I say cheap how cheap do I mean, well we purchased two Verizon Wireless Prepaid Samsung Smooth U350 phones for $19.98 each, and includes $10 of credit which will provide 10 days of usage (that's days you actually use it) as all calls between mobiles are free, the phones aren't bad looking either.

Walmart.com: Samsung Smooth U350 Pre-Paid Wireless Phone with Bluetooth, Verizon: Cell Phones

With the shopping done we retired back to the villa to escape the midday heat and enjoy the private pool. An interesting fact about pools in Florida is that by state law there should be either an alarm or barrier around all private pools, hence that most have a mesh structure around them, which also helps to screen out some of the heat of the sun.