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January 4, 2006

Day Two: Blizzard Beach Birthday

For our second day here at Disney World, we decided to go play at a water park.

(Oh, and happy birthday to me - 33 years on the planet!)

Blizzard Beach is one of two themed (natch) water parks here in the World (the other is Typhoon Lagoon). I'd never been to Blizzard Beach; the last few times I'd come to the World, it had been closed for refurbishment. But this time 'round, Typhoon was the one being renovated. Score.

The Blizzard Beach gimmick story is that Florida was hit by a freak snowstorm a while back, and a ski resort was built to take advantage of it. Then the sun came out, and now the whole thing is sitting here, melting in the snow. The park has a working chairlift (!) and loads of long-run, high-speed slides, including the "Summit Plummet" which shoots you out at 55 mph(!).

Richard and I had a blast. Blizzard Beach has a bunch 'o competitive rides, like toboggans and timed-innertube races, so we wound up trash talkin' and doing a whole lotta racing against one another - laughing and being obnoxious the entire time. (Oh, and generally Richard got spanked.)

After a few hours in the sun, we hoofed it out of the park and over to the Winter Summerland minigolf course. I'm a minigolf freak - if there's a dancing hippo and a putting green within about two miles, I'm generally able to sniff it out. So we spent an hour or so maneuvering the ball around Santa and his elves. And, as the cherry on top, it was an under-par game for the both of us.

Quick trip to the hotel, change of clothes, and off to Downtown Disney to see the resident Cirque du Soleil show - "La Nouba". The Cirque folks have a permanent installation in the "Westside" section, so the plan was to get dinner at the Bongos Cuban restaurant at 7, and then head over to the show ... until Bongos lost our reservation and was totally unhelpful about doing anything about it. (Fortunately, the day was saved by the World's Best Waiter at Wolfgang Puck, who got us in and out in 30 minutes flat.)

If you've never seen Cirque du Soleil, go. Seriously. I can't recommend it enough. It's kind of a strange thing to explain - I'm forever telling people what it's not ("OK, so it's like a circus, but they don't use animals, right? And they have clowns, but they're not, like, creepy or skanky or anything. And they use acrobats, too, and other kinds of physical artists, but it's not all Barnum and Bailey or anything..."), but that's because it's such a unique experience that there's no good baseline for comparison. So let me just say this: Cirque du Soleil is one of those experiences that gives you a renewed appreciation for the human body, training, art, and music. It's incredible.

Now, I'd seen "La Nouba" back in 2002 (Richard hadn't caught that show, being that he was prepping for the marathon at the time), and was so impressed that I'd gone on to see "O" and "Mystere" in Las Vegas later that year. I've also seen the traveling shows that come to Seattle now and again (e.g., "Dralion"). So I can say with authority that "La Nouba" is the best of the lot. Astounding, astounding stuff.

(My Flickr photostream is up to 74 images.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer at January 4, 2006 11:47 PM. Posted to Disney | Travel.

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Posted by: Sarah at January 24, 2006 12:08 AM

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