Sunday evening we returned from our last family of three vacation and we had so much fun!
We left here on Thursday morning around 10:30 a.m. and Maddie did awesome in the car. Despite asking "are we there yet" after only being in the car for 20 min. she pretty much kept herself entertained thanks to some new apps I got for the Ipad, the dvd player, books and colors I packed for her. It took a little longer then 5hrs to get there, but we took our time. We stopped for lunch, then of course around 3:00, we got stuck in traffic in Austin.
We got to the hotel a little after 4:30, unloaded and freshened up, then headed down town to the River Walk for diner at Casa Rio. We ALWAYS go to Casa Rio when we are there. Its a Jones family tradition, now also an Edwards family tradition. We bought some souvenirs, walked around and got Haagen-dazs Ice cream and had a nice night out.
The next day, we took a shuttle that our hotel provided to Sea World. This was awesome, that way we didn't have to pay for parking. We bought three 2 day, 2 park passes and If we would do this trip again (I'm sure we will) I would HIGHLY recommend doing this. Visiting the two parks was great. We did Sea World and some of their attractions during the morning while it was cooler, and when we couldn't take the heat any longer, we walked over to the new water park Aquatica. They had an impressive variety of slides and pools Maddie could go on and she loved every minute of it.
At Sea World we got to buy food to feed the dolphins, we saw the Shamu show and a Beluga Whale show, we saw penguins and Zoey from Sesame Street. We also played in a Sesame street water spray area and Maddie and Brian rode some rides. Maddie was just tall enough to ride a Shamu roller coaster and while at first she was determined NOT to ride it, she got up the courage after riding another ride she loved. She wound up riding the roller coaster about 3 times with Brian and it was her favorite.
It was VERY hot and humid this past weekend, so we were so glad we were able to visit the water park. There were a few more shows at Sea Word I would have liked to see, but I was willing to bypass those and go get cooled off. Not to mention, I was getting tired of walking and I know Maddie was dying to play in the pools. Aquatica had an area were you could buy food to feed the sting rays AND if you wanted to, you could make an appointment and get in the water with them. I'm assuming those sting rays had their stingers removed. We did not do that, but it was fun to watch.
Aquatica also had a ride that I could ride! It was a large tube ride that seats up to 4 people and Maddie was tall enough to ride it too. I figured, if Maddie could do it, I could do it. It was kind of risky, but Brian convinced me and I was really wanting to ride something. I'm so glad I did. This ride was so much fun and it was no worse then riding in a car. (bumpy wise). At the end of the ride, we ended up in a little lazy river type pool and it took us under where the the sting rays and fish were swimming. So fun!
At the end of our stay, Saturday night, it stormed big time in San Antonio. We probably wouldn't have even noticed except for around 1:00am the FIRE ALARM started to go off in the hotel. We all woke up to the terribly loud noise and wondered what in the word was going on. My immediate thoughts where "I'm in my maternity night gown, I don't have a robe with me, what am I going to wear to stand outside in the rain?" Maddie was afraid, but not panicking and Brian went to the door to see what was going on in the halls. All of a sudden the alarm stopped and we could see people walking back to their rooms saying it was a false alarm. We were very irritated to say the least, but then I also realized that if that had been a real fire, we would be the dumb family that didn't make it out because we didn't run out quickly like some families did. So we calmed down from the minor heart attack we received and went back to bed. About an hour later it happened AGAIN! the alarm didn't last for more then about 20-30 seconds, but that is a lifetime when its the middle of the night. This time Brian didn't even get out of bed and I called the front desk to ask why this keeps happening. I could hear the poor girl's nervous voice on the other end and phones ringing in the background. She said that there was water on the roof and they were trying to get it off as quickly as possible. It shouldn't happen again. Ok. I went back to bed. It took me a while to go back to sleep and two hours later the alarms went off yet ANOTHER TIME! It was around to 4:00 a.m at this point and I was tempted to get a refund and go to another hotel. But again, it was 4:00 a.m. so we didn't. Fortunately it did not happen a 4th time and all 3 of us slept till 9:30.
When we went down to check out Sunday morning, there was a mile long line of irritated people wanting to check out or some sort of refund because of the sleepless night before. The hotel gave us a full night's refund and that was fine with us. We were wondering why water on the roof was causing the alarms to go off and later my mom mentioned that it was probably a problem with the water mixing with the electrical boxes or something like that, which now, makes sense.
We didn't rush coming home. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant (not fast food) and made many other necessary stops thanks to the De-caf I had earlier and the plethora of juice boxes Maddie drank.
end to part 1.
