This morning we got up to be at the bus stop for 9:00 to go to Typhoon Lagoon with Nathan and Ginger! Only Mom, Travis, and I were going; Sam and Dad stayed home to get some work done. So, we all got ready and got our stuff together and headed out for the bus stop a little after 9:00! We made it to the Outpost bus stop around 9:20, and a Typhoon Lagoon bus came within about 10 minutes. By the time we got there and got into the park, it was about 9:45 - 15 minutes until opening. There weren't a ton of people when we got there, but as it got closer to 10:00 we noticed that a tour group had arrived. It didn't seem too bad at first, but they literally just kept coming! There must have been hundreds of them, no joke. It was insane. They were all 15 year old Argentinian girls, too. We actually noticed that most of the tours groups we saw in January-February were full of 15 year old Hispanic girls. We knew they were 15 because all the groups had names like "Celebrate Quince" and "Fifteens". We think that because it's 2015, and 15 is a big milestone birthday for them, they must have been doing some special trips for that. They were seriously everywhere.
So, when the park opened at 10:00, we made sure to go the opposite direction of the girls. We headed to the right and they headed to the left, which really worked out well. We found a nice spot to get some chairs over by the wave pool, and once we got our stuff set up we called Nathan and Ginger to see if they were almost there. They said they were on their way, so we waited for them before we went on any of the slides. We just walked around for a while while we waited, going into the shop and looking around. They ended up getting there around 10:20, and once they got their stuff all set up, we headed off to the slides! The first ones we did were the Storm Slides. We did those about 3 times, then we did Mayday Falls, which is probably my favorite slide there. After that we did Gangplank Falls. Those 3 slides are all in the same area, and none of them had waits more than 5 minutes. We were worried that the giant tour group would make the lines longer, but they all seemed to be hanging out in the wave pool for the most part. After Gangplank Falls, we decided to do Humunga Cowabunga, which is also in that area. Humunga Cowabunga is similar to Summit Plummet at Blizzard Beach, except that it's a bit smaller and short, and it's enclosed in a tube. I had never been on a water slide like this before, so I was a little nervous. The line wasn't long, though, so we got up there pretty quickly. When it was my turn, I just closed my eyes and went for it. I thought for sure that I would end up liking it, but I really just did NOT. I pretty much hated it, actually. It was really steep, and when I got to the bottom I kind of slammed into the wall and hurt myself. I was glad that I had tried it, but I did not plan on going on it again. Everyone else besides Mom, who didn't go on it, likes it a lot, though.
When we were all done with the slides in that area, we headed over to Crush 'n Gusher! We decided it would be fun to take the lazy river over there, so we found an entrance and grabbed some tubes. We let the river carry us over to Crush 'n Gusher, and once we arrived we hopped out. The line for this was a little longer than for the other slides, but it was still 10 minutes at most. We went on probably 4 or so times, and we had so much fun! If you ever go to TL, you cannot leave without going on Crush 'n Gusher! If you go in the summer, you should totally go there first thing, and if you can you should try to ride at least 3 times because there are 3 totally different tracks.
Once we were all done riding the water coaster, it was around 11:45. We decided to go back to where we had put our stuff and eat our lunch! So, we headed back over towards the wave pool. We had brought lunch, but Nathan and Ginger were buying food from one of the quick service places. While they ordered we found a picnic table to sit at. Nathan got a hamburger with pulled pork on it, and Ginger got some sort of wrap. They both said the food was good! After we were all done eating, it was about 12:15. The shark reef had opened at noon, so we wanted to get over there right away. Ginger and I were the only ones who wanted to do it, so we headed over there. The rest of them were going to ride Crush n' Gusher a couple more times, then meet us at the wave pool after.
We got to the shark reef and the line wasn't too bad. We ended up waiting about 15-20 minutes. All the people in front of us were the girls from the tour group, and it seemed as though none of them spoke English. The cast members were having a really hard time trying to communicate with them, and they just really didn't seem to be understanding the rules. We could tell because when it was our turn to swim, they told us that we had to keep moving, not to touch, sit , or stand on the rocks, and not to use our arms to swim. They didn't follow any of those rules, and the cast members were still having a hard time trying to tell them to keep swimming and not to touch the rocks.
We still had a really fun time, though, and we saw a lot of the fish and sharks. A bunch of sting rays got super close to us, which actually really freaked me out! It felt like they were about to touch me, and that made me just a little uncomfortable. I prefer to just look at the fish, not touch them.
Once we got out, we showered off to rinse off the saltwater, then we headed over to the wave pool to meet back up with the others. We met them there, and we just hung out in the wave pool for a while. We probably spent about 30 minutes in there before going back to our chairs. We had pretty much done everything at this point, so we asked if there was anything anyone wanted to do again. Everyone said they were all set, so we started packing up our stuff to head back. Once we had changed and packed up all our stuff, it was about 1:30. You can catch a bus directly back to your resort before 2:00, so that was really nice. Nathan and Ginger headed back to Pop Century and we were going back to the Fort. We were meeting up again that night at Magic Kingdom, so we would see them later.
Once we were at the bus stop, it seemed to be taking forever for a bus to come. It felt like we saw a bus come for every resort except ours! Finally after about 20 minutes we saw a Fort Wilderness bus coming. We picked up our bags and stepped out of the little bus stop shelter, but as the bus got closer we noticed it wasn't really slowing down. The bus literally drove right by us without stopping, stopped for like 2 seconds at a different stop, then just left. We were totally confused! We knew for sure that the bus had said Fort Wilderness, and we made sure that we were at the right bus stop. It was the weirdest thing! Our bus stop was shared with another resort, and when that bus came we asked the driver if he knew what was up. He said he didn't know, but he radioed for another bus, and one came within 5 minutes! We hopped in and made our way home. Once we got back to the Fort, we caught a yellow bus back to our loop and walked back to the RV. It was around 2:15 now, and we weren't heading out for Magic Kingdom until after dinner, so we had plenty of time!