Another Mini Disney Vacation-Day 2-Afternoon

We woke up about 10:00 Tuesday morning (we're known for not waking up before there's a "1" in front of the number - the joys of being retired!), and headed over to Centertown for breakfast.

After breakfast, we headed over to Typhoon Lagoon. When we renewed our annual passes, we noticed a strange code on the back and when we asked what it was, the cast member told us Disney was giving their annual passholders a free day at a water park (Typhoon Lagoon or Blizzard Beach). We like Typhoon Lagoon a tad better since the water is warmer than Blizzard Beach (Blizzard Beach's water comes off a "melting glacier" so it's "icy"). We had just started floating around Castaway Creek when one of Florida's infamous summer thunderstorms hit. We spent the next hour sheltered in one of the covered eating areas. After it stopped raining, we went back to Castaway Creek and floated around twice more.
We then decided to hike up Mt. Mayday and see how close we could get to Miss Tilly. We had been to Typhoon Lagoon a number of times before we moved to Florida, but had never hiked the mountain trail (we didn't even know it existed until we picked up the water park guide). The trail offers some spectacular views of the wave pool and other water features also. We were also able to get relatively close to Miss Tilly. Miss Tilly is the fishing boat that became impaled on Mt. Mayday when the typhoon blew through this area (the story is part of the fun at Typhoon Lagoon - a story only Disney could dream up). One of the neat things about Miss Tilly is she is also a clock - her whistle counts off the hours (for instance, her whistle will sound four times for 4:00 and will sound once on the half hour). Water also "erupts" from her smokestack when the whistle sounds. Many years ago when we asked about the counting whistle, we were told it was a way for children to know what time it was so if they needed to meet their parents at a specific time they would have no excuse! After hiking the trail, we decided to head back to the hotel and get ready for dinner. We were a little hungry and we wouldn't be eating for 2 hours so we stopped and got 2 pineapple banana smoothies. As we were heading to the car another thunderstorm engulfed Typhoon Lagoon, but this time we were prepared - Dan had gone to the car earlier and gotten our rain ponchos which we promptly put on. By the time we got back to the hotel, the rain had just about stopped.