Disney’s Blizzard Beach

We kicked off our first park visit on a bright sun-shiny day at Blizzard Beach!!

 

The theming here is just incredible, much like everything else Disney. Rumor has it that what was once a ski resort has melted into the watery wonderland of Blizzard Beach. Christmas music plays all day, hot chocolate is a plenty, a ski lift carries you to the top of the biggest slides and pretty much everything is snow capped.

In case you’re wondering, this is what life really looks like in our family…

But I digress. The ski lift was a huge hit with our family!! You can get to the majority of the biggest slides with this cool ride. The littles adored it and I loved not having to go up all those stairs that are so common with water slides.

A cast member at one of the slides below played rock-paper-scissors with the baby on the lift every time we went up. It’s little things like this that make Disney so magical and memorable.

At the top there are two thrill body sides. Honey wants to put a PSA out there that these should be done with caution. He would advise nobody over 25 ride them :-) A huge hit was the family raft ride and we did it over and over again while the lines were short.

Of course, we looked high and low for hidden Mickey’s. This one wasn’t so “hidden” but a cast member assured the littles that it counted.

After a good hour of sliding with NO lines, we took a break for the mini donuts I’ve heard so much about. And they were totally worth it!!! YUM!!! We went with sugar and chocolate sauce and I could have eaten the whole dozen by myself.

Next up was some good old fashioned family racing. We’re nothing if not competitive.

Honey beat out the boys no problemo on Snow Stormers, with John coming in second and the baby bringing up the rear.

We finished up ALL of the slides in the first two hours and did many of them multiple times. Afterwards we spent at least an hour in the Melt Away Bay wave pool. If you’ve been knocked down and nearly drowned by the huge waves at Typhoon Lagoon, rest assured that these are MUCH tamer.

Hmmm…strangling or brotherly love? My littles would argue those are one and the same.

Since we had the water camera with us, the baby had to take his fair share of underwater selfies.

After lunching at Lottawatta Lodge (sadly the Warming Hut is only seasonal), we hit the Cross Country Creek lazy river. The littles stayed just far enough ahead of us so that we could really relax and be clear of their antics :-) We loved this part of the day, but be forewarned that the water coming out of the cave is seriously arctic. They take the whole “blizzard” thing to a whole new level.

After cooling our jets on the floats for a while, Honey and I parked it in beach chairs next to the Ski Patrol Training Camp. The littles entertained themselves here for the rest of the day.

It was a fantastic time and we loved every second of Blizzard Beach. We’ve not been to the water parks in the high season, but can surely say that our visits in late September and early October have been amazing!!

If you go…

• I’d start with the slides from the chairlift before that line gets too crazy. If your kids are bigger (John’s age), there is a single rider line that moves very quickly.
• Bring your own towels or plan to rent for $2 each. We brought ours and just dropped them on lounge chairs under an umbrella by the wave pool as soon as we got there.
• The sidewalks were almost all constantly sprayed with little sprinklers to keep them cool. This was such a nice touch as I have had my feet scorched many times at water parks and pools.
• Thanks to the new MagicBands, no money or key to the world cards had to be kept up with. It was perfect!! They can go in the water so that wasn’t an issue at all. This saved us from having to rent a locker too, which was nice.
• Try the mini donuts and hot chocolate. SO fun and silly to do while in swim suits :-)
• Water parks are only open from 10-5 in the off season so get there early and know you’ll end your day pretty early too. We found the park to be nearly empty for most of the morning but it started to fill up after lunch. We were able to do all of the slides, many multiple times, from 10-12. And then the rest of our day was spent in the wave pool, lazy river and kid area where there really aren’t lines.
• We have always just driven ourselves to the water parks rather than taking busses. The parking is right there at the entrance and is very easy. Again, we get there when they open and go in the off season so I can’t promise this is always the case.
• For our eight night stay, we did a three day ticket + water parks and more. This gave us entry into three theme parks (we chose Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios) plus admission to three other smaller parks (we chose Blizzard Beach, Typhoon Lagoon and a combo of Disney Quest and Winter Summerland Mini Golf). It’s a great way to get more bang for your buck and still have SIX days of fun!!

After our water park fun, we ended up spending the evening with one of Honey’s childhood friends and his daughter back at the Animal Kingdom Lodge Uzima pool. It was SUCH a fun treat to run into them!!

And so that wrapped up another magical day in Disney World!! Stay tuned for tomorrow’s adventures.
xoxo