AQUATICA

Written by: Julie Hart
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Aquatica is the new Sea World water park situated on the opposite side of International Drive to Sea World. You can buy a ticket just for the water park or do as we did and buy a ticket for both. The water parks are a great way to break up the other theme park visits and you can make them as relaxing or as hectic as you like. We have visited the Disney water parks many times in the past but this one was completely new to us. We arrived early and secured ourselves a spot on the ‘beach’ with a parasol and a lounger each, having already left our valuables in a locker. Thus settled, off we went to enjoy the rides. First was the Dolphin Plunge, a water slide with a glass tube that took you straight through the dolphin pool. As it was June we had to queue for quite a while for the ride, then the ride was so fast that we whizzed through the glass tube with no chance of seeing the dolphins! It was still good fun and we were able to see the Commersons dolphins quite clearly through a glass viewing window underneath. We then tried all the other big slides in turn, again we had to queue but the rides were great, we really enjoyed the Whanau Way and Roa’s Rapids, which is a fast moving river which you swim around wearing a life jacket. Our kids are teenagers now but there was plenty for younger children to do. We had planned then to relax in the sunshine but unfortunately a thunderstorm put paid to that and we had to seek shelter for an hour until it passed. By this time it was late afternoon and a lot of people had chosen to leave which meant that we got the chance to go on everything again without queueing. You can’t take food in with you but there are plenty of places to eat and you can buy a ticket which allows you to eat all day. As you would expect the park was clean and well organised and we had a thoroughly enjoyable day.