Our Wet & Wild Phoenix Staycation 2014 Pt. 2

After a busy first day in Phoenix, we were a little tired. But not so tired that we didn't have a whole lot more fun the second day!

We roused ourselves early in the morning but didn't try to rush ourselves too much. We snuck over to a nearby Denny's for some breakfast, and then came back to our suite to get ready for more swimming! However, we had jumped the gun a bit...the water park wasn't even opened yet. We had to goof off inside our room for a bit first...

...but after that it was time to get wet again. Nathan chose to sit that morning out, reading in the shade of a palm tree instead. However, he anticipated only being at the water park for one more hour or so. Instead, our girls stretched the second water park stay out to two-and-a-half hours! They were having too much fun to leave.

Nathan got a little dehydrated (this was Phoenix in summer, after all), and most of our morning had fled before we finally left the resort to do other things. Maybe next time we come to the Arizona Grand (and there will be a next time!), we will stay for more than one night; it always feels like we are a little rushed for time and don't get to luxuriate in the hotel room. Plus, Celeste will get to actually ride the water slides next time, and Aurora will be swimming free! It promises great possibilities.

Once we checked out of the resort, dried off, and changed into our clothes, it was lunch time! Luckily it wasn't too far to our next stop...

IKEA.

 

There's no Ikea in the Tucson area, but there's a huge store crouching just off the freeway in Tempe, a Phoenix suburb. We've probably driven past it dozens of times since moving to Arizona almost eleven years ago...after all, it's on our way to the Mesa LDS Temple. But due to countless reasons/excuses over the years, we'd never gone inside. In fact, we'd never gone inside any Ikea store before. Well, almost...Nathan once stopped by their warehouse as part of a business trip, to pick up some office furniture. But he'd never spent long periods of time within the store before.

But! I was tired of getting funny looks from my friends when I told them I'd never been to Ikea before. It was past time to pay it a visit and discover the wonders hidden within. But I was a little nervous; I'd heard that its labyrinthine layout meant it could be hard to escape the store. Plus, on an episode of 30 Rock from a couple of years back, the main character and her boyfriend almost broke up due to a fight they had in an Ikea. The thesis of the whole episode was that Ikea ruins relationships! I silently prayed that my marriage would survive this challenge.

As it turns out, the store won us over early, mostly because we were hungry. We made it up to the dining area, not sure if we were going to buy a full lunch at the cafe or not. Nathan had looked up a couple of nearby restaurants we thought we might want to try. However, as luck would have it, the Ikea cafe in Tempe offers free kids' meals on Tuesdays. Hooray! Not only were we hungry, but thie deal appealed to our cheapskate natures. Ikea was pushing all our buttons.

We all opted to try Ikea's famous meatballs. They come smothered in a creamy gravy, and with a side of mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam. Very Swedish, and very delicious! The girls devoured all their meatballs in short order, and Nathan and I had to start sharing meatballs from our own plates, as offerings to my daughter's huge appetites. The only downside to the whole meal was the noise; the cafe was very crowded, mostly with other families taking advantage of the "kids eat free" loophole. But we couldn't begrudge them their meatballs.

Since we'd come straight from a long morning outside at the pool, it felt nice to sit down in a cool building and fill up on a good meal. We were re-energized. It was time to make our way into the twisty, turny, never-ending showroom that is the second floor of Ikea.

It actually didn't turn out too badly; since we were only window shopping, we didn't feel too pressured to stop and examine anything too closely. And since it's a furniture store, there were plenty of spare seats on which to rest in case we got tired! The girls had fun trying everything out, and Nathan and I spotted a few things we might like to purchase at some point in the future.

As we made our way downstairs, through the massive warehouse and out into daylight again, we thanked our lucky stars that we finally found some shortcuts through the massive store. But overall we were pleased; it was a nice (if slightly overwhelming) first visit to Ikea. Something tells me it won't be our last.

But by now it was early afternoon, and time to drive quickly to Gilbert, a Phoenix suburb on the southeast side of town. There was a bowling alley/family fun center named FlipSide that we'd heard good things about, and we couldn't wait to see it!

We bought four three-hour unlimited attraction passes, and shared them between the five of us. That turned out to be more than adequate to fuel our fun. Sometimes it was a bit of a bummer for one of us to be left out of something, but for the most part we had no trouble taking turns. FlipSide was a really awesome place, and we wore ourselves out playing there.

Some of the games were mainly for kids, like this multi-story Blast Pad, in which you could climb, explore, and shoot plastic balls at one another:

There was a large laser tag arena as well. Lorelai and I loved it, the rest of the family...not so much. Aurora, in particular, was afraid of the dark room and the loud music. Maybe when they're all a little older it will be more fun to play. Another problem was that there weren't enough people in FlipSide for there to be constant laser tag battles; sometimes you had to wait a while for the staff to round up enough people. Hopefully that won't be a problem at our next visit (and the low crowds were certainly nice for every other part of the fun center!).

Possibly the kids' favorite part of FlipSide was the Laser Maze. It was a really simple idea: a completely dark room with lots of criss-crossing light beams stretching across the room at various points. The player simply has to get from the front of the room to the lighted target in the back, without tripping any of the laser lights. Each time a beam is tripped, time is added to your final score. There were multiple degrees of difficulty available (including a moving beam), and a two-player option, in which each player had to reach a separate target.

Best shot I could get of the Laser Maze; it looks a lot cooler in person

I think Celeste and Aurora, in particular, played this game a dozen times each. They had so much fun crawling, sliding, and bending to squeeze through all the light beams. It was nice and quiet in the room, so there were no obvious distractions.

We didn't bowl at FlipSide (bowling fees were separate from the attraction fees, and we wanted to focus on the games instead), but we did have the opportunity to try the mini-bowling alley, which was tucked away behind the full-sized bowling lanes:

It was kind of adorable to look at the tiny bowling balls, and the tiny bowling pins held up by wires, and the tiny half-length lanes. The younger kids loved it, though; it was a lot easier than regular bowling for them!

Another favorite were the bumper cars, which luckily everyone was able to ride by themselves!

One of my favorite Celeste pictures ever

I was a little worried about Aurora getting left out of the action, but she learned the controls pretty quickly and was zooming back and forth with everyone else in no time. What a tech-savvy generation we are raising.

 

Like the Laser Maze, the kids went back to the bumper cars again and again...

...and so did Nathan!

We played hard at FlipSide, and definitely got our money's worth. We also managed to score some prize tickets at the arcade, so all the girls got to pick out a new stuffed animal (Lorelai got a chipmunk wearing a "YOLO" sweatshirt, and Celeste & Aurora chose unicorns). By this time it was getting pretty late; we grabbed dinner at a nearby Subway restaurant, refilled the car with gas, and started the long drive home.

On the way south, we drove through several cloudbursts. The first rains of the monsoon season had come just a few days before; thankfully, the clouds stayed away during our time in the water park.
 We arrived home a little damp and a lot tired, but very happy. Even though our family didn't get a "full-length" vacation this summer, it has been really fun to go on a couple of these short trips. And there's one more overnight trip ahead next weekend...we're going camping! But first, I'll have to get caught up on the rest of the blog.