Waterpark Extravaganza

Dr. Peds had a conference in Wisconsin Dells, and he brought the rest of us along to partake in the gigantic indoor waterparks (yes, multiple) at the resort where the conference took place.  We haven’t ever taken the kidlets to Wisconsin Dells, and of course they were very excited about the prospect of waterpark fun, although not so excited about driving in the car to get there.  We arrived late at night on Thursday, hours past bedtime and after the waterparks had closed for the day, so even though they had seemingly boundless energy upon arrival, we pretty much headed for bed.

Friday morning arrived!  Everyone was up bright and early, by six o’clock!  There was swimming to be had.  Unfortunately the first waterpark didn’t open until 9:00!  The wait was excruciating.  Everyone was tired.  Everyone was grouchy.  We headed off to a breakfast buffet at one of the restaurants inside the resort.  Breakfast didn’t start until 8:00!  More waiting.  Waiting is hard when a swimming pool is involved.  Eventually the doors of the restaurant opened, and we herded the kidlets toward the buffet where they ate profuse amounts of fruit, pancakes, french toast, and other crazy and wonderful breakfast foods they don’t usually experience, like donuts and cinnamon rolls and even cottage cheese!  The Banana LOVES cottage cheese, and she had not had it for breakfast before.  The price of the kidlets’ meal was half that of an adult, but they ate three times as much food as Dr. Peds and I.  To be fair, they were very, very hungry, and they had been waiting to eat for a couple of hours, when breakfast is usually the first order of business around our house.

We headed back to the hotel room to wait some more.  While we were waiting, some people fell back asleep, or in other cases, nearly fell back asleep, and other people spent a little time reading.  Still other people entertained themselves on the iPad, since waiting is really, really hard when a swimming pool is involved.  The people in the room below us did not really appreciate eight kidlet feet bouncing on the floor, so we were trying our best to keep bouncing kidlet feet off the floor until later in the morning.

After a bit, it was nine o’clock!  The kidlets were ready!  Dr. Peds was still sleeping.  (His conference didn’t start until later in the morning).  I can remember how frustrating it was when I was a kid and I had my swimsuit on and couldn’t WAIT to get to swimming pool, and my dad would just SIT in the hotel room. Why on earth would you want to sit in a motel room when you could be swimming?  It didn’t make any sense to me whatsoever.   I could relate to their frustration.  They pested and sat on top of Dr. Peds until he finally woke up.

We were off!  There were three different big waterparks at the resort, all connected by hallways and skywalks and passages of that sort.  We headed to the wave pool first, which turned out to be the favorite of almost everyone (go figure, with my beach loving, wave loving crew). The whole resort was filled with clorinated goodness and faux tropical temperatures.   We tried all the different slides at two different parks in the morning, and ended back up at the wave pool, where Dr. Peds had been playing with Mr. TOF while the rest of us were more adventurous.  He needed to go to his meetings, so we played in the waves for an hour and a half more then then headed off hungry back to our room for a little lunch and a little rest for Mr. TOF.

It turned out that when Mr. TOF finally gave in and went to sleep for a much needed nap, every single other kidlet fell asleep too!  When Dr. Peds came back from his meeting, my little guy was still sleeping.  Actually everyone was still sleeping, so Dr. Peds woke the big kid lets up and took them to the last watermark and to revisit all their favorite adventurous places, and Mr. TOF and I joined them later.

My favorite slide was a thrilling family raft ride called the Hurricane that involved a drop off, that I experienced backwards.  I screamed. I screamed so much I hurt my vocal cords!  The kidlets and I went on it together, and we were all screaming.  I tried all the other slides too, and came to the conclusion that waterslides are much more disorientating as an adult.  Yikes!  I don’t remember them being so dark and so twisty when I was a kid.  Sometimes I would forget to breathe on the body slides, and I always came up sputtering at the end.  My wise Banana said to me, “Remember Mom, when you get to the end all you have to do is grab onto the edges of the slide and sit back up.”  Good advice.  I was reminded of my Aunt Nancy who nearly drowned in the Lazy River until a lifeguard told her to stand up.   When I was a kid my family and Aunt Nancy’s family traveled to Wisconsin Dells at the same time for a vacation.

Speaking of that Banana, she is one brave girl when it comes to waterslides.  She is JUST tall enough to go on everything, and partake of every adventurous slide she did.  I kept thinking, aren’t you scared?  These are big slides!  They were scary for me!  She just bounced from one slide to the next.  YaYa and Mr. SP did the same.  They were pretty much the perfect ages to take to a waterpark.

The tricky thing about the waterparks was simply that there were so many people.  So very many people.  Because the three parks were spread out, and they all were crowded, there was a lot of navigating, a lot of herding cats through crowds, which is always exhausting, and particularly so on the last day, Saturday, when I was carrying a big heavy bag with everyone’s street clothes because we had to check out of our room earlier than we were leaving and wanted to spent those hours swimming.  There were crowds in the parks, but even worse was navigating through the crowded hallways from one park to the next.  I concluded that 1.5 days of waterpark was the perfect amount.