Indoor Water Park

We have an indoor water park less than half an hour from our house.  After going to Tropical Islands in Berlin, Germany, we knew it was inevitable that we would visit the Great Escape Indoor Water Park.  I have to say, it was no Tropical Islands, but it was a water park and it was inside and most importantly, it was WARM!  After the winter we've had we were in desperate need of a warm vacation.

It ended up being cheaper to stay at the hotel than to just buy day passes, so we planned to leave right after MiniM.E. was done with school on Wednesday, play that evening, sleep in the hotel and then play all day Thursday.

In retrospect, I most definitely would NOT have stayed in the hotel with a preschooler and a baby if I could have just driven us home for the night.  A. We had to pack half our house to be prepared for an overnight in a hotel.  B. Both kids were either really excited or really freaked out by sleeping someplace different and stayed up much later than usual.  C. See (B.) and also woke up at 5 and 5:30 leaving us four and a half hours in the morning before the water park opened to find things to keep the girls occupied.

Other than the fact that we probably should have chosen to sleep at home (how were we to know?) the girls had a great time.  Most of the water park was a little to old for MiniM.E., but she tried a few water slides and spent most of the time at the kiddie area.

LittleL.G. testing out the water

kiddie slide!

loves this place!

MiniM.E. was so excited the first day at the water park and played really hard until she was exhausted (she lost a lot of sleep the night before because she was so excited).  Little L.G. couldn't even wait until we left the park to crash:

Once we were in the hotel for the night the girls got a second wind and played for a while:

where's the baby?

Early the next morning we woke up and immediately at 5:30am MiniM.E. wanted to go to the water park.  Only four and a half hours to fill!  So we took our time getting dressed and having coffee in the room and then drove to Denny's for breakfast.  Before it was even time to get ready to go to the water park, LittleL.G. was already on nap #1 for the day:

Finally the water park opened.  Thursday we spent a lot of time all together in the Lazy River.  Even LittleL.G. swam with us in the water wrap.  It really tired her out!

 We only lasted about an hour and half on day two- MiniM.E. was running on a severe lack of sleep from being so excited Tuesday night and not sleeping much in the hotel.  There's only so much Lazy River and kiddie area you take I guess.  Some of the stuff for older kids seemed really awesome and in a couple years MiniM.E. is going to have a blast!

It was a semi-successful but overall enjoyable trip and it was so nice to be warm for a couple days!  We really tired out the girls!