Wednesday morning we got up and got showered/dressed and ready for a day of fun. We went down to the hotel restaurant for their buffet before going to Sea World, then grabbed our backpacks, jackets, the kids and loaded up into the car to go to Sea World. It was 8 miles from our hotel, but we found it easily courtesy of Verizon Navigator (tm). Our wait to get into the parking lot was a bit longer than it should have been. We noticed that our line was going slower than ALL the other lines. I think we got the "slow" employee. We finally got parked and went to handle our tickets. James had purchased them online so we just had to go to the computerized kiosk and scan our printout and we were ready to go. First we went to see the Arctic Encounter which was pretty neat. We saw some arctic birds, polar bears (unfortunately I didn't get very clear pictures of the polar bears) and the beautiful Beluga whales.
Next, we had some time to kill before an arranged encounter, so we went to see the Penguin exhibit. Lots of different varieties of penguins, including breeds that lived in cold and warm weather. I think penguins are great fun! Cold loving penguins:
Here are some of the warm weather loving penguins:
After that, it was time for the girls and I to do a dolphin encounter. In retrospect, we should have just left Julia with James because she was scared, but James had signed up for this online so I had little choice but to take her. We got to learn more about dolphins, instructed them to do tricks, as well as touching them and feeding them dead fish. They also like to eat ice.
I'm pretty sure that by this time, it was time for lunch, and then the dolphin show. This one is always a pretty good one. We made sure not to sit in the splash zone, because you have a 99% chance of getting soaking wet!
Above is Dolly, the highest jumping Dolphin at Sea World-San Diego!
I believe after this we went back to the hotel to rest for the night shows, then went back to see the sea lions and Shamu shows- both holiday specials. It was difficult to get good pictures at these night shows, but I have one of the sea lions, one of the Shamu show and another of Shamu splashing. :)
The next day we had a scheduled breakfast with Shamu. We got there a little early and spent some time at the viewing area watching a couple of the killer whales swimming around. They are so beautiful to watch! Then we got to have breakfast with Shamu with a small private showing and some of the tricks that don't get you soaked. Although Dolphins are big showoffs, these whales like to show off too, and they do have minds of their own. They don't always do what their trainers instruct them to do! This is about as close as you can get to the killer whales because they don't do encounters with them like they do some of the other critters.
After that, we went to see the sea lions "regular" show, let the girls get their faces painted and saw the Shamu "regular" show, prior to leaving and heading over to the San Diego Zoo. I will leave the post about the zoo and wild animal park for another day, because this one has worn me out! Hope the few readers I have enjoy the pictures!
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