Disney World Day 5--Blizzard Beach and Magic Kingdom

For our water park day, we chose to go to Blizzard Beach. It had lots of great slides, a wave pool, and a lazy river. The biggest, tallest slide was terrifying, but we all did it! The family raft ride was my favorite, and the tube ones were fun, as well. We rode slides all morning, took a lunch break, and then did the lazy river and a few more slides before heading out to the bus stop. The kids loved the lazy river. Joel and Grant weren't exactly "lazy" in it, though. They pushed and pulled Kari, Aubrey, and I through. They also enjoyed strategically moving us under the waterfalls. :-) It was nice to take a break from the amusement parks and do something a little different. We took our afternoon rest back at our hotel and took the bus to Magic Kingdom for the evening. Right when we got off the bus, it started to rain, and when I say rain, I mean downpour. We had packed ponchos in our luggage...but left them behind in the hotel room. We had heard (and Greg and I had experienced before) that Florida often has rain in the afternoon that lasts 30 minutes or so and then is done. This was not that kind of storm. We got pretty wet, running through the rain to dinner in Liberty Square (Mickey and Minnie whoopie pies for dessert). While we were eating, the rain had turned into a serious thunderstorm. We headed out in the rain to go towards our next ride, Splash Mountain, but by then the storm was monsoon-like with wind blowing the rain sideways, and there was quite a bit of thunder and lightning. People just vanished from the streets. All the outdoor rides shut down, and people took refuge in shops, and every available space under cover was packed with people.We took shelter under cover with the rest of the people in Magic Kingdom. It was pretty comical, seeing ourselves dripping wet, knowing we had six ponchos back in our hotel room.  We Oregonians felt right at home, though—wet and cold! We hadn't been cold all week. It felt pretty nice, actually. We weren't far from Pirates of the Caribbean, so we dashed over there to the indoor ride while it was still thundering and raining. We were laughing, though, not crying! The storm lasted a little over 2 hours, and then it was gone. Lots of memories made that day!

We watched the fireworks from Frontierland where we had lots of space and weren't being elbowed by people on every side. We'd already seen the big show, so it was fine to just see the fireworks away from the castle.