This morning we took the kids to the water park here. It's called The Big Kahunas. We left early enough to get there right as it opened because it tends to get VERY crowded. It is a lot bigger than you can tell from the road, though. It sits right on 98, which is the main road in the tourist part of Destin.
The parking lot and entrances is around behind it, if you consider the street side the front. We walked all the way from the ticket booth, through the park to the street side to find a couple chairs to put our stuff on. It's a long walk and you have to go up a bunch of steps and then back down a bunch of steps.
They have so many water slides there. There are water slides for all thrill levels, too. They have 3 or 4 kiddie pools with slides and fun things in them. Michaela was tall enough for everything so she's really too big for the kiddie pools. Caleb is pretty much too big, too, although he can pass some. But, we made him limit his time and he only was in the biggest kiddie pool.
They also have fountains to play in. This was a nice resting spot for us for a few minutes because the kids could mess around in the fountains and since it's on steps we could sit down for a couple minutes. There are steps everywhere in this park and it got tiring quickly.
There are two "lazy rivers" in the park. One moves a little faster than the other. I think the faster one is in the part that was probably the beginnings of the park before they made it huge. There are a few tamer water slides, two kiddie pools, and two tube flumes back by it. It's near the entrance and everything back there looks a little older than up closer to the road.
Michaela and Michael went on the big fast slides, including two black slides that Michael said were pitch dark inside as they were coming down. I'm not into the adrenaline rush slides, so Michael did those with Michaela. They also did the other fast ones in the park.
Caleb has come such a long way since last summer. Last year he was still afraid of the water and would not get his face wet. We could not even take him in the shower because he didn't want his face wet. Now, not only will he get it wet, he will go under by himself and LOVED the water slides.
We went down a tube flume that was encased for most of it. Caleb and I went down on a double tube together and it was FAST and mostly dark. You could see daylight through the rivet holes, but it just looked like tiny specs as you raced passed. You really could not see anything and there were places where water was falling down over you. Caleb giggled all the way down and just LOVED IT! I did too. It was a lot of fun.
There were two of the tamer slides that landed into the lazy river. Then, three of the faster slides had a large catch pool. But, the rest of the slides all had small basins with rushing water at the bottom to slow you down and stop you. I think they designed most of their slides this way to save room in the park. It was really kind of cool, literally and figuratively.
They were filming a kids' reality web show there while we were there. It's some local web television show. It looked kind of cute. The stars, Megan and Miranda were there. They had singing and dancing kids' groups. But, we didn't really see much of it.
We only stayed until 1:30 because it was starting to get REALLY crowded. You couldn't get a tube for any of the rides that needed tubes. And, it was getting hard to move. That was the plan, though. We knew we were going to go early and then leave when it got crowded. Three and half hours was really long enough for me anyway.
It was so much fun. The kids had a blast and so did Michael and I. I'm so glad we did this. I only got a few posed pictures there, but I was having too much fun to pick up the camera and stay out of the water.
Here are the websites for the park and the show they were taping in it:
http://www.bigkahunas.com/index.html
www.dreamingofdestin.com
No comments:
Post a Comment