April 1 - Blizzard Beach

Image copyright Disney

On this day, in 1995, Disney's Blizzard Beach water park officially opened its doors to guests for the first time. The third water park to open in the Walt Disney World resort, Blizzard Beach also boasts the third highest attendance of all the world's water parks (its sister park Typhoon Lagoon is second but a water park in Guangzhou, China beats them both by a good half a million guests a year). So the other Walt Disney World park must be fourth then, right? Sadly, no. The Florida Project's original water park, River Country, stopped operating in November 2001 after 25 years on the shore of Bay Lake (it wasn't officially closed until January 2005 when the announcement was made that the water park that hasn't reopened in over four years isn't going to).

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How did Blizzard Beach get its winter theme in the middle of central Florida? Legend has it that a freak snowstorm hit the area and the snow stuck around just long enough for a ski resort to be built. As they were about to rent their first pair of ski boots and watch everyone awkwardly walk around in them, the snow melted and the whole thing became a water park instead. Now considering how long it's taken Disney to build their new gondola transportation system, you decide how much water that backstory holds. While I enjoy Blizzard Beach, truth be told, I like the second Florida water park better (and if we're really being transparent, I like Seaworld's Aquatica best, except for the horrible parking situation over there and Seaworld's seeming inability to handle anything that even remotely resembles a crowd, but I digress).

Typhoon Lagoon opened for business on June 1, 1989 and fixed many of the problems that River Country had. It was a stand alone attraction (River Country was connected to the Fort Wilderness Campground), making it easier to get to. It had lots more parking and it didn't use filtered lake water in its attractions (one of the convenient excuses... I mean health reasons cited for the closing of River Country was an outbreak of nasty parasites being contracted around the country in non-chlorinated waters).

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The two Disney water parks have several similar rides between them. Both have lazy rivers, both have steep water slides that can literally tear a person in half, both have tube slides and both have body slides. I guess I just buy into Typhoon Lagoon's backstory more (it's a tropical bay that's been through it with a big storm). I mean we have big storms in Central Florida all the time. Storms of the snow variety? Not so much. Don't get me wrong, I can have  blast at either one. So if anyone is going soon, let me know so I can rearrange my schedule (you're buying this time, right? I swear I'll get the next one).