Fun in the sun

Every morning when we wake up, I've got to nag Luke to get up and get ready and, most mornings, when Ali and I are ready, Luke hasn't put on his shoes, or sunscreen or or or.  So this morning I made a checklist (with little tokkies for him to tick) and a time that all must be done by.  It worked a treat.  He was ready before me this morning.  Yay!

So we had a wet day in the sun today.  We went to Aquatica - a water slide park.  We got there before 9am and did a few slides before the crowds built up and boy, did they build up!!!  It got super busy.

The slides were really good.  The first one, we had to sit on a single tube and the turns turned us around so that we couldn't help going backwards.  It was great.  Then we went on a double tube down a slide in the dark and when we shooted down into the pool, Luke was catapulted right out of the tube!  There was another slide that had a section of the tube that was see-through and went through a tank with dolphins swimming around.  Another slide shot us into a type of spiral bowl that we circulated about 3 times before continuing down the chute.  Then there were toboggan races which were really fast (and the wait wasn't very long). 

One of the best rides of the day was on a large tube that we could all sit in and we zooted really fast down a straight slide with bumpy plateaus.  Unfortunately, this slide also had the longest wait and I got frustrated because they could have run the slide much more efficiently.  Happily though, I really haven't had any reason to get frustrated with inefficiency on this holiday - what a pleasure!

There was also a wave pool which the sun beds overlooked (just like a real beach). 

There was a really fun circular current pool that pushed us along in a whirly current - it was terrific. 

We loved the double tube ride and the wait wasn't too long so we did it quite a few times.

So, it was all just really fun and good.  But 5 hours was enough and then the sun and chlorine got the best of all of us.  Here are some wrinkly fingers especially for you, Flops.

And here's a picture of how hectic the queues got:

I had to have a giggle at some of the people at the park.  The coast is really not that far away, but some people chose to come and sit at Aquatica all day and I'm pretty sure that this couple didn't get wet:

These parks all have the same overpriced food so we opted for the healthier option...  McDonalds.  How scary is that - for me to consider McDonalds more healthy than theme park food.  Ali got into one of her uncontrollable giggly moods afterwards and talked about McEverything.  The funniest was the McWrap on the menu which sounds rude if you say it quickly. 

By the end of this holiday, I think I would have had enough of theme parks to last me the rest of my life.  Once you've paid the entrance fee, the park is hell-bent on getting more money out of you:
- they have photographers all over the place issuing out numbers on armbands of pictures that they took of us that we could purchase for a cool $20 each.
- if you want a locker, you've got to pay again each time you open the thing.
- bagels, ice-creams, candy floss, popcorn are all on sale for exorbitant prices.
- you can rent a towel for the day.
- today we saw another money-making racket... here's a family dryer for $3!!!

We stopped off at Walgreens afterwards.  How's this for a choice of chewing gum:

And you can buy a baby alligator head if that's your thing:

We're having a relaxing afternoon.  Seaworld tomorrow and they're open from 9am - 10pm.  I intend to get there before it opens and there's enough to see and do there to keep us busy until closing.  So a bit of a rest this afternoon is probably a good idea.

I've just done a naughty at the hotel 'business centre'.  I ordered some Dermalogica because it's cheaper here than in SA.  The postage cost $10 and then the hotel wanted to charge me an additional $10 handling charge.  And, to make it worse, Drugstore.com packaged my order in 2 boxes, so the hotel wanted $20.  Argh!  I got out of paying the first $10 by promising to pay the second.  But they have really been useless.  I've been down there 5 times to pick up the package and haven't managed - they don't even bring it to the room.  I told the lady behind the desk that I'm going to write a bad review on TripAdvisor, so she went to call her manager.  She came back with the package (which she hid behind a screen), but no manager.  After waiting for nearly 10 minutes, I just reached over the screen, took the package and walked out.  Everybody wants their piece of the tourist wallet!!!

Then we played shaya tuffel but it was a bit like playing against myself twice.  I must have said, "Ali, your go", "Luke your go", "You must follow suit", "a 2 of trumps beats any other suit" a gazillion times.  We didn't finish the game and ended up with a massive pillow fight.