I had a chance to stop by MK yesterday for a few hours and made a point of heading back to see these newly unveiled components of the Storybook Circus. For those who feel compelled to complain about this area (especially those who've only seen photos), you need to spend some time on a hot summer day and see the smiles and hear the laughter from kids and adults together in the space. There were countless kids running in and out of the streams of water, a group of 5 adults were standing right in front of Casey waiting for the point where he blows his top so they'd get wet. All were smiling, all were laughing. This is exactly the experience Disney had in mind and I think they pulled it off brilliantly.
I did notice one thing that I suspect Disney might need to make an adaptation for. Large numbers of the kids were taking there shoes off and piling them at the top of the stairs before heading into the play area. It seems likely that they may need to add some sort of a shoe locker type of thing like you might see in a McDonald's Playland for the little ones to put there shoes to keep them dry.
It may not be something you personally would enjoy but I assure you there wasn't a kid around there yesterday who was not having a good time. Except for the one who walked by me as his dad told him he couldn't go in the water and get wet; he wasn't very happy.
As for the water, it is certainly recirculated just like a swimming pool is and I noted a hint of the smell of chlorine when I was there very late on Friday night. The chlorine smell surprised me a little since most pools don't use chlorine as the primary method to keep them clean but that might just be a little 'new attraction' smell since I didn't notice it yesterday.