Water Cube

Typically on my birthday I spend the day hanging with family and just relaxing. This year since I am in China I decided to live it up! I headed over to the water cube at the National Aquatics Stadium to go to the Happy Magic Water Park with seven of my friends!

The National Aquatics Stadium was where the Olympic swimming events took place. Its where Michael Phelps won his gold medals!!!! They have converted half of the water cube into a water park. The other half still has the diving pool, the racing pool, and the warm up pool. The racing pool is still used for events, but the warm up pool is open to the public.

Then we all headed over to the water park! The water park had about 8 different water rides. There are pipeline rides, water slides, the tornado, toilet bowl, the lazy river, different raft rides. There also was a wave pool. The cost to get in was about 40 dollars, you rented a locker and then got a cool wristband that opened it. So no worries about keys or anything. When you walked out into the water park you had to go through a mini shower so that you are rinsed off.

The pool was crowded but not super crowded. It could have been a lot worst.

Naturally being in China, there were naked children in the pool, rude lifeguards, and no personal space.  The children in the pool were funny. Most people in China actually don't know how to swim. So the children had on life jackets, inner tube rings, goggles and were in an actual intertube. The water park provided life jackets for people to wear. At home no one would ever take a life jacket unless it was for a small child. Here almost every one had a life jacket on. As you can see in the picture there was lots of floatation devices in the pool. The pool also wasn't that deep either. About half the pool was knee deep. Towards the end you could get to the deep in, which was probably 2 feet of the pool. And the deep end was about 6 feet deep, not that deep.

Another interesting part of the trip was the lack of well safety in the water park. I decided to go on this raft type ride down a slide that was a lot of fun. My friend Amy and I pop on into the lazy river. We are going down. As we go down, life guards are throwing water in our faces from water bottles. Then we get to the end, the guy at the end is like wait to get out. He then proceeds to take are inner tube and flip us over. We are in waist deep water and I happened to be right next to wall. So I smack my head on the wall, and gulp down delicious China pool water. I was not happy. Number 1, you don't flip someone's tube in waist deep water, number 2 you dont do it if the person is near the wall 3. They weren't doing in to Chinese girls...

The rides were a lot of fun at the park. I typically don't go on water rides but after going on these I am now a believer in them!

The park was a lot of fun. Was it over priced yes, would I go again no. But I am glad I am did it and got to experience a water park inside an Olympic venue!