During our trip we spent a lot of time at the water park (panorama) attached to the hotel. Our room turned out to be the closest room to the upper deck in the park so we never had a long walk to get there. Corwin enjoyed the three water slides although he liked the tube slide the best. Charles didn’t want to play in the water Friday but he adjusted by Saturday and on Sunday said that he didn’t want to leave. Alice also took a bit to warm up to the water and spent almost all her time directly attached to a parent. She got a little more adventurous on the last day.
The main attraction for smaller children (although Corwin spent a lot of time there as well) was a pirate ship with all sorts of water emitting units.
Most of the water jets could be adjusted (within limits) by various controls. The kids really liked that.
The big feature of the set up was a giant bucket of water on top. It would fill slowly and every 10 minutes or so would tip over, delivering a deafening blast of water to the assembled crowd.
The water would hit a roof first (or it would likely have knocked people over) and then spray on to a crowd that would assemble for the tipping. A very clever bell was attached to warn people when the bucket was ready to tip. It had a tube from near the top over to a water wheel with little metal balls. When the bucket was almost full, water would flow through the tube, rotate the wheel and causing the balls to strike the bell (video).
Mom thought that I should hang out with Corwin so he didn’t get lonely going around by himself, but I found that almost impossible as Corwin would simply disappear the moment I had to watch Charles or Alice. I took it as a signal that Corwin didn’t find going solo to be much of an issue. Besides, I had to take off my glasses to ride the slides and then how could I scope the babes? I did manage to get in a few rides with Corwin.
Mom was also left out, as she wanted to ride the tubes on the simulated river that flowed around the inside of the park but neither Corwin nor Charles would go with her and Alice freaked out.
Overall the water park was a big hit with the kids. It didn’t hurt that on the upper deck was an arcade of various electronic games, where Corwin and Charles spent a lot of time and money. Alice liked it and she didn’t even need a token to enjoy many of the games.
