O.M.G!!!!!! I have wanted to go to SeaWorld my whole life and it’s one of my top bucket list items. I’m so excited I feel like I’m twelve-years-old again!
The sea creatures, the rides, the aquariums, eeee! I can’t wait. I bought our tickets online, booked reserved seating for all the shows and picked out the rides I wanted to go on. Turns out there was really only one roller coaster I wanted to ride. The rest seemed to be typical roller coasters and water sluice rides. I’ve been on lots of those. So with our itinerary planned out, off we go.
The flamingos were greeting everyone as we entered the park. They are so cool.
Our first stop is the penguin exhibit. Wow, it’s cold, like 32 degrees cold. Also, notice the yellow hue of the light? Apparently, that’s what the light looks like in the arctic. Penguins are more vocal than I thought they would be too.
They have a viewing area so you can watch them swim. It was a little hard to get pictures through the glass, but I think you get the idea.
We are spending our time between shows exploring the outside aquariums. The manatees are very calming to watch as they swim slowly around their enclosure. Here’s an orphan baby nursing from SeaWorld’s surrogate manatee mom. The keeper said the baby is comfort nursing. Hmm. So babies other than human babies comfort nurse? Cool.
These two orphans are touching each other for comfort. All three were orphaned when their mothers died in the wild from injuries caused by boat props. They were brought here to SeaWorld for rehabilitation before the will be released back into the wild.
Manatees are plant eaters so I’m not sure what this bird is hoping to find.
The first show of the day is the dolphins. I love the dolphins, they are agile and fun.
They can jump really high too.
I wonder if this little girl knows she’s about to get wet?
I had a swimming pool at home when I was growing up. I used to pretend I was a dolphin swimming in the sea.
My friends and I would try to jump like dolphins and swim like them too.
We pay a visit to the dolphin nursery but they are busy swimming around and practicing their “show moves” it is hard to get a picture. They do play just like regular kids, racing each other around, jumping together and even practicing beaching themselves on platforms. It is really cute.
The next show is the sealions. I’m a little disappointed in this show though. The trainers spend more time acting out a play and the seals seem to only do a few tricks through the whole show. There is this little otter though that comes out and does some really cute tricks.
The sea lion feeding area is a lot more interesting and fun. There is a variety of types and ages of sea lions, even a mama and her baby. At first we weren’t sure why all the birds were hanging around. Turns out all those people you see in the picture are tossing little fish to the seals.
The birds are trying to steal the fish thrown to the seals and cleaning up the ones they miss. This is almost as fun as watching the seals catch the food.
You know when you spend time on your hair, get it perfect, and then spray the heck out of it only to walk out the door and have a gust of wind ruin your hairdo?
This bird knows exactly how you feel.
A face only a mother could love.
Spotted Seal maybe?
The sun is hot! Time to tour the aquariums. Taking photographs through the aquarium glass isn’t really working all that well so we don’t have pictures of all we saw.
In the shark aquarium we get on a moving walkway and it takes us through a glass tunnel and the sharks swim all around us.
If I have to pick just one aquarium as my favorite, I would say the beluga whale aquarium is my favorite. I so wanted a picture but none of the ones we took came out. I could have watched all day.
There is just so much we saw and did, I can’t tell it all in a blog post.
The daytime orca show was mostly about getting people wet. Not a lot of tricks or jumping but we did get quite a bit of information about killer whales.
The evening shows, part of Electric Ocean are awesome. Less educational and more entertaining. After the evening shows a fireworks display shut down the park. It was like no other firework show we have ever seen. Water fountains, lights, fireworks and fire balls. It was incredible. As bucket list items go, this trip was everything I hoped it would be.
