For 90% of our visit to Orlando last year, we were blessed beyond belief weather-wise.  Despite Orlando’s proclivity for random rain showers, we weren’t rained on once. We took ponchos with us every day, and blessedly never had to use them.

We did, however, have to use our jeans and jackets–but that’s another story for another time.

Our first full day in Orlando was spent at Universal, most of it in the Islands of Adventure.  The weather was the most perfect we could have hoped for. Sunny, but not hot or too humid. We were comfortable in shorts and tee’s, hiking through the park didn’t overtax us.

Still, about two hours in, we spotted the first water ride. It was one of the white water rafts, where we knew we’d get…a little wet. Molly was opposed to getting wet, but we convinced her it wouldn’t be so bad…(are we bad to be such liars 😉 )

Popeye & Bluto’s Bilge Rat Barge was the winner for our first water ride.  They offered ponchos, but we scoffed saying ponchos were for chumps. I think my exact words were, “Who goes on a water ride and wears a poncho?”

For a good portion of the ride, our side of the boat escaped the worst of the impact of the water and we thought we were safe–but no one is safe on the barge. By the end we came off dripping.

Soaked.

Right down to the bone.

Of course, when you get off any water ride, Universal has these dryers in place. People dryers.

We stared at them, and down at our soaked clothes, and back at the dryers. We debated for a long time as people were using the set we were considering.

After much debate ad hemming and hawing, we decided to go ahead and use them. Two and three of us at a time, at $5 a pop, we hopped in. Dried off, mostly and went about our business.

Further down the line we came to the flume ride, Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls. This one had a HUGE drop that excited Kennedy to no end. Molly and Denver?  Not so much…they wanted to beg off the ride, so we let them. Erik and I thought “Well, we just dried off, but surely we can’t get as wet on this ride as we did on the barge.”

Oh were we wrong.

The ride is long, you keep thinking the big drop is coming, but it doesn’t. You get soaked along the way by spraying water, twists and turns, and evil people on the bridge spraying water guns at you. By the time you get to the drop, you know what’s coming. We were sitting near the front so we were way more soaked the some further back.

We got off lamenting the wasted $$ at the drying pods, and totally ignored the pods at the end of this ride and went about our day preferring to let the sun and light breeze dry us.

So needless to say by the time we made it to the Jurassic Park River Adventure we were still damp and figured we couldn’t lose. Once again, Molly and Denver said “Nope” to the flume ride and positioned themselves near the end of the ride to see us emerging.

Wouldn’t you know–when we got off that ride, we were drier than Denver and Molly?  Those two buffoons decided it was GREAT fun to stand in the splash zone at the end of the ride and get flat-out doused by every flume that came over the edge.

So, needless to say our first day at the parks was our wettest day (especially since we ended up missing on one particular ride at Disney, which is, as I said, another story for another day).

But it sure was fun.

Waterlogged in Florida isn’t such a bad thing, after all.