Sea World

Day 23:

Once again, we left later in the morning and did not get to the park right when it opened.  By the time we got there, the crowds had already begun filling in a lot of the main attractions in the park.  

I was very impressed with the Salute to Heroes promotion they advertise and besides knowing the Sea World is just amazing anyway, it was one of the main reasons I drove the family ninety miles from our temporary home in L.A. down to San Diego.  All seven of us got in for the cost of one child's ticket.  You can't beat that deal, but they only offer it once per year.  We plan to use it again next summer in San Antonio.

When we entered the park, we entered just in time to catch the tail end of a dolphin feeding.

 One of the first things we did was watch the Shamu show, One Ocean, at Shamu Stadium.  The ramp leading into the stadium directs us half way up the bleachers, where we can go up or down.  The seats leading down the stairs had a warning attached to them.  It said, "Soak Zone."  It was flipping hot, the sun beating down on us like fried eggs.  So, stupid as we may be, we decided to sit in the first row, closest to the tank where the killer whales were already swimming around.  How bad could it be, anyway?

The children are amazed as Shamu leaps out of the tank.

The show was immensely entertaining.  The killer whales jumped out of the tank several times and the kids were amazed.  The guy on the ground scolded my kids a few times for standing on the rails, reaching their hands in the fountains as they were streaming into the tank and trying to touch the water in the tank (which was fortunately safely out of their reach.)  Then the lady with the microphone said, "So who would like to get wet?"

As soon as she said this a bunch of things happened all at once.  The crowd started to erupt in a fury of excitement, the trainers on the ground began doing funny motions, communicating with the marine beasts (or maybe they'd been doing it all along and I only noticed it then), and the whales all jumped out of the tanks, seemingly synchronously, as though orchestrated with a giant clock.  I remember I had my camera up to take a picture when suddenly I realized what was happening.  It was definitely a deer-in-the-headlights moment because I just stood there dumbstruck while a wall of cold salt water drove right through me.

Rebekah and Kimberly bracing for the impact of the tidal waves created by the killer whale.

And the waves did not stop coming for several minutes after that, randomly throughout the soak zone of the stadium.  Everyone within twenty rows of the tank was soaked to the bone.  All of a sudden, all the people we had noticed before the show pulling off their clothes to leave their swimming suits didn't seem so ridiculous.  I looked at Jenny and she was protecting Jonathan.  I looked down and Daniel was reaching up for me, so I grabbed him and stood off to the side for the rest of the show.

Leaving the Shamu show, we headed across the park to the penguins.  I thought there was something about to happen there, but it turned out it was actually something you had to pay for.  Nonetheless, it got us across the park from a lot of the crowd that just left the Shamu show and another show was starting at Dolphin Stadium, Blue Horizons.

I thought this show was a little weird, but having just left the Shamu show and still being soaked, we were more than satisfied to watch.  It used more than just dolphins, also several different types of birds and two pilot whales.  People rode in on the dolphins and the whales sometimes and other times people swung from ropes in the air, an acrobatic show included with the dolphins.  Everyone agreed that we enjoyed the dolphin show better.

Leaving the dolphins, we walked around to the sharks.  The most fascinating thing there was the moving sidewalk at the end taking us through the tank full of sharks and other fish.  The kids did a ride with Jenny while I changed a diaper.  

While I changed a diaper, the kids stood in line and rode the Riptide.

Afterwards, we hit a gift shop where Daniel filled a tube with animals.  Although he had lots of different animals to choose from, he always picked the animals with the white, the polar bears, the beluga whales and the penguins.  I would offer him a shark and Daniel would refute it, even when Ben told him he really wanted one.  

After that, we walked back toward the penguins and saw the Arctic Wild exhibit, where they housed polar bears, beluga  whales and a walrus.  (I only saw one walrus, but there may have been more.)  It was really cool to see the animals, but the greatest view was when we got to go downstairs and see them swimming in the water.  This is where Daniel was entranced by the beluga whales.

In Wild Arctic, Daniel saw his favorite, the Beluga Whale.

While we were doing this, Jenny took Ben and Kimi on the Journey to Atlantis ride, which Rebekah declined, staying with the little boys and me.  We met them back at the penguins and later rode the tower in the middle of the park together before stopping to eat just before the park closed.  When we finished eating, we raided the front gift shop area, scouring the place for the penny machines, getting our pennies pressed into the cool shapes they offer at the park.

Then we drove an hour and a half to our home in Anaheim.