Friends, Family, Food and Floating Tube

Our Summer vacation started pretty early considering we headed down to Orlando the day after the school ended. This year we headed down to Orlando to celebrate Mr. Rojo's Birthday and kick off our Summer vacation with the Mouse.

We stayed at Mystic Dunes Resort and Golf Club. It was a really nice property with a lot of amenities for the whole family. There are golf course, several pools, mini-golf, bike trail, jogging trail, basket ball court and fitness room. We had a 2 bedrooms / 2 bathroom condo with full kitchen. It was Mr. Rojo's parents timeshare so we didn't have to spend any money on accommodation. Our friends from Florida came to stay with us a couple nights. What a great fun we had!! We ate, we drank, we played game, we chatted and then we drank again..

The next day, we headed out to Disney's Blizzard Beach Water park. We arrived right when the park open at 10 AM. I liked Blizzard Beach from the start just like love at first sight. You know why? No parking fee! Anyone visits Disney World knows that parking fee is not cheap there. When we went to Animal Kingdom it was $12 per car. Ouch!! But no parking fee at the water park.. Score #1.

The park is small enough for us to enjoy all the fun rides in one day without feeling like rushing. But it's big enough to accommodate all the guests that we don't feel overcrowded.

Once we got in, we headed out to get the locker to put our personal belonging there. Then we headed to the Tike's Peak area which is a perfect area for family with small children. We found a few chairs under the hut to make that our home base. We had our cooler with us filled with drinks and snacks. Score #2 for saving on snacks and drinks. The kids loved to play at the shallow pool area and went up and down kid-sized slides. We felt pretty save as there were several lifeguards in the area keeping close eyes on them at the bottom of the slides.

We could probably stay there the whole day but the rafting at Cross Country Creek was begging us to take a leisure ride around the park . It was a nice relaxing way to unwind. There are also life jacket for kiddo if you didn't have one. Miss J loved it so much that she asked to do it again and we did right before we left.

Mr. Z's favorite was the Teamboat Springs - a family rafting ride. To get to the ride we had to ride the chairlift (just like at the ski resort) to the top of the Mount Gushmore.. It was a really cool ride and the raft is big enough to accommodate the whole family.

Another favorite for the Q Family was the Melt-Away bay or what we called the Wave pool. Mr. Z loved to jump on the wave and Miss J loved to ride the wave on the raft.

By 5pm, we were all wiped and it was about time the park is closed. We got in the car and the rain poured down. What a perfect day!

I highly recommended the water park to family with small children over other parks like Animal Kingdom or Epcot. It's cheaper and more fun for little kids. Plus it's more relaxing to the adult as well. The park is not so big so you won't be walking all day.