A Brief Visit to Typhoon Lagoon at Walt Disney World
On our Florida trip back in June, we decided to visit Typhoon Lagoon, one of the water parks at Walt Disney World. It wasn’t our first visit there, at least not for all of us. Laura and I had been there last year (see the photos here), as well as in 2003 and 2004. But Jaylin had not been before, and he was looking forward to it.
The photo above is one that I took just before we bought our tickets and went inside. I should have done a better job of getting all of the “Typhoon Lagoon” wording in the photo, but that is hard to do when part of it is hidden behind a ticket booth. Oh well. And just look at that beautiful blue sky! If only it had lasted.
Once we got our tickets and were on our way inside the park, we stopped for this photo of Laura and Jaylin with Lagoona Gator, the mascot of Typhoon Lagoon who you almost never actually see in the park.
We went and got our locker, enjoying the fact that we were early enough to beat the long locker lines. After dropping off our things, we went to ride the water slides before the lines there got long. It turned out to be good timing, because we got to ride all of the slides on the Crush N Gusher that we wanted, and they all were fun.
After that, we headed over to do some of the other slides. But as we were making our way up the steps to the first slide, we heard the announcement that everything was closing due to a lightning storm in the area. Major bummer! So we decided to go check out our options. Looking at the radar on my phone, it didn’t look like all that much, so we waited it out. And after just a bit, everything opened back up once the storm had passed us by.
But we wondered how long it would be before another storm came up. We could see the clouds gathering all around, and the radar on my phone had shown some more rain off in the distance as well. We decided to do one of the main things that we wanted to do, which was the main wave pool. We enjoyed the big waves for a while, and then we enjoyed the small bobbing waves when they switched to those. There were a few sprinkles of rain while we were in the water, but nothing major.
And then, just as we were getting out to go try another slide or two, we once again heard the announcement that everything was closing again due to another storm. And before we could get back to our locker, the rain started. And it was a deluge!
Trying to stay relatively dry, I researched our options on my phone. Don’t you just love having the internet in your hands no matter where you are? The radar showed that the rain would be around for a while, even if the main lightning threat moved out. I searched and found that they do have a rain policy: if you bought your admission (as opposed to entering with an annual pass or other such ticket), if you have been there less than four hours (we had), and if the attractions have been closed for longer than 30 minutes, you can get another ticket good for readmission for up to one year. That sounded like a good deal. We decided to take that option as soon as it had been 30 minutes, because the rain was getting harder. We also decided to go ahead as soon as we could, because if the attractions open back up (which probably wouldn’t have happened any time soon due to the constant lightning and thunder) the rain readmission ticket is no longer offered. As it turns out, we weren’t the only ones who took advantage of that offer, because we had to wait in line for a while (in the rain) to get our replacement tickets. But I think we made the right decision.
Unfortunately, that visit to Typhoon Lagoon was on our last day in the area. But because the readmission ticket is good for a year, we will hopefully be back in time to use the ticket before it expires. So we can go next year without having to get another ticket. Not bad!
And if you are wondering, the two photos I included in this post are the only two Typhoon Lagoon photos I took that day. I had planned to go on an afternoon photowalk, but obviously that never happened. Going to a Disney place and only taking two photos? That really isn’t like me! Oh well, hopefully the photowalk can happen on our next visit.
About the photos:
A single RAW exposure, processed in Photoshop. Read more about the photo software and gear I use at the camera gear page.
Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10
Lens: Olympus 14-42mm IIR
