Yesterday, I had the opportunity to finally visit Sea World Orlando. For nearly the past year, I lived about 5 minutes away from this park, but somehow never found the time to go. I even made a trek down to Tampa to visit it's cousin Busch Gardens at one point. Regardless, I had a really good time at Sea World and just want to share a little bit about the park with y'all. Thanks again to Kaylee for hooking me up with tickets to go!
The park ended up being a lot bigger than I had expected. I had driven by it quite a bit, but I guess it just seemed a lot bigger on foot. Unlike Disney or Six Flags parks, I didn't really get the feeling that I was moving from one themed area to the next, but rather that the whole park was just one giant aquarium There might have been park areas on the map, but I didn't really pay attention to it. There wasn't any signage, as far as I remember, about different areas. Instead, I guess you could divvy up the park according to the landmark attractions or shows in that section.
Let's start with what you see when you first walk in: Manta. This coaster is a B&M Flying-type that is themed around the manta ray sea creature. In case you didn't know, manta rays are like stingrays but they have no barb or stinger and are usually much larger than stingrays. The Manta's track dominates most of the entry area of the park. The queue for Manta takes you through several different exhibits featuring a variety of rays and other fishes, and it was much cooler than the outside heat. Since it is the down season right now, we didn't really have to wait to board the attraction, but it's nice that those visiting in the summer would be able to wait indoors.
The ride also has two loading areas that merge for the lift hill, a brilliant way to reduce wait times for any coaster. I've never seen it used on a flying coaster, but it works just like any other double loader. Of course, only one area was being used when we were there. The ride was very smooth and provided lots of great thrills. It also had several in-line twists that kept you spinning through the air. At one point it takes you down to the water for a "splash zone" effect, resulting in some of the riders getting a little wet. All in all, Manta has great themeing and proved to be the best flying coaster I've ever been on. Definitely check it out when you visit.
In conjunction with the Manta queue aquariums, there is a separate post-ride area you can go into with a lot of unique sea creatures such as giant starfish, sea dragons, and a very cool overhead tank, allowing rays to fly over the top of you. There is also a ray tank around the corner, but I'll talk more about that later on.
The next area of the park features dolphins, including the Blue Horizons show. This show was my favorite of the four taking place that day. Since the trainers were able to be in the water with the animals for this one, they took full advantage of interacting as much as possible with them. The most impressive stunt was the underwater corkscrew swimming as the divers spun with a dolphin propelling each leg. The show also had birds and divers and stuff, but the dolphin segment is what you go for. You can usually tell how much I like a show by the number of pictures I take, with less pictures meaning more interest. I was definitely focused on the show itself and didn't want to waste time trying to get a good picture. Here's one of the stadium though:
Towards the back of the park you will find a fantasy-like area, featuring the Journey to Atlantis and Kraken. I was really excited to ride the Atlantis attraction (almost to the point of annoying my friends about it) since I had never been on an official water coaster. Water coasters are kind of like mixtures of log flumes and coaster track. The vehicles transition smoothly from water-filled areas into winding coaster segments. Atlantis was an interesting ride. It was obviously somewhat dated, and it had this goofy vibe to its storytelling. At the beginning, some random guy whips out a magical sea horse to guide you through Atlantis, but you never see him, or the seahorse, again. As expected, things go south when some Medusa-style water witch shows up to curse you. The indoor portions of the ride weren't bad, but it was hard to take it all seriously. Nonetheless, there were several drops and curves throughout the ride that actually made it fairly thrilling and overall fun. You do end up getting wet, too.
Kraken is a floorless coaster, like Superman Krypton Coaster at Six Flags Fiesta Texas or SCREAM at Magic Mountain. It was a pretty good ride, with all the kinds of inversions you expect from these kind of rides. The themeing was okay, but obviously they didn't have a kraken in a tank to look at it line, since, well, they're not real. But they did have eels in the giftshop!
Across from those two rides is the newest attraction area: Antartica. This ride opened up just last year and featured a ride-exhibit combo with penguins. The area also had a quick-service restaurant and Coke Freestyle machines with a special vanilla sprite mix. I'm not really a huge fan of vanilla-flavored sodas, but it was nice and cold. Speaking of cold, the indoor queue areas for Empire of the Penguins are kept at near-freezing temperatures. For hot, sweaty guests popping in for the ride, it's a huge relief from the outdoor weather. The team members, however, were decked out in winter gear to keep them warm.
The ride is very well put together and features ride technology never used before. Each ride vehicle fits eight people and is shaped like a giant hockey puck. The vehicles seemingly have a mind of their own as they slide and spin across the ice. Supposedly it is very unlikely that they would ever run into each other, but sometimes the other pucks got a little too close for comfort. As a quick aside, the ride actually has two settings: Wild and Mild. The mild option results in a fairly linear path with no spinning or bobbing.
The ride ends with you unloading at the penguin exhibit. The exhibit was expansive and had multiple levels for viewing. Again, it's a nice break from the heat. After about 20 minutes of ride and exhibit, you may start to feel a bit chilly.
On our way to see One Ocean, we made a few detours. At Pacific Point, we tried feeding the sea lions with fish, but my fish got jacked by a bird mid-toss. There used to be a show in that area, but it's currently closed down. A new show is supposed to be introduced next year, but the details are not yet known.
Shark Encounter is an impressive aquarium with all kinds of sharks, shark information, and even a restaurant and bar. As part of the experience, you travel on a moving sidewalk that positions you beneath the shark tank, allowing for some creepy encounters.
Shamu Stadium is the largest theater and features One Ocean, a show with killer whales. The show was fun, but it got a little stale with the whales just splashing the audience for a third of the performance. I know the show used to feature a lot more interaction with the trainers, but recent law suits due to accidents involving the whales have done away with that. This area of the park will also be getting a major overhaul once they start building new (and much larger) whale enclosures in the coming years.
Against the better judgment of those that had actually been on the ride, we decided to try out Wild Arctic. This ride is a simulator like Star Tours or something you might have found in your local mall 20 years ago. The simulator was actually huge, and clunky, and smelly. Seriously though, it just had that old, motion simulator smell (you know the one). The ride was very jerky and actually made me somewhat dizzy. While it's not something I would necessarily look forward to, I would still probably do it again given the opportunity. At the end of the ride, however, you get to see a very detailed exhibit for walruses. So yeah, that was cool (GET IT?!!?).
Happy Harbor is the kids area behind Shamu Stadium. We had a little time to spare so we swung by here to ride Shamu Express. It's your typical kiddie-coaster, with these neat little whale-shaped trains.
The last two shows we saw were Alure - Call of the Ocean and Pets Ahoy. Alure had a cirque-style feel with tumblers, dancers, and acrobats. Although fairly small in scale, I was impressed by the talent in the show and their stunts. Pets Ahoy is an animal actor show with lots of critters. Sea World also stated that all the animals used in this show are actually rescues from shelters, which is pretty cool. Both shows are also indoors, for those looking to visit anytime between February and December.
One of the last attractions we checked out was Turle Trek. This journey gives you an up-close view at sea turtles and manatees, combined with lots of great messages about protecting these animals. You also go into a 3D dome theater and get to see life from the perspective of a sea turtle. The dome effect was cool, and I've never seen another theme park try to replicate something like it. The turtle in the lower right photo is called Grandma because, well, she looks really old. She is actually missing her lower jaw and so the trainers hand feed her every day.
Sea World has lots of fun rides and shows, but the animal encounters are probably the best thing about the park. Early in the day, we stopped by the ray tank where you can pet and feed stingrays. You may not know this but I actually highly dislike fish and sea creatures in general, mostly because they freak me out. I didn't really want to reach into the tank and pet a ray, but I ended up just doing it. At first I barely touched them and then pulled back since they felt slimy. It was okay, but we left to go do other things.
On the way out of the park, we decided to swing by the rays again. This time, however, we tried feeding them fish. The proper technique for this was to place your hand flat on the bottom of the tank with a small fish sticking up between your fingers. Then the rays would swim over and suck it up. Again, I was like heeeeeck nawwwww but decided to just man up and do it. The first ray kinda missed the fish and sucked on my hand so I freaked out, let go of the fish, and then got splashed by another ray that jumped in to steal to the food. But I decided to keep going at it. We got to the point where we were just petting and feeding rays non-stop. We even started naming some of the rays that were repeat customers. My favorite was Hoppy. He would kinda poke his head out of the water as he "hopped" over to see you. In the end, playing with the rays was the most enjoyable thing we did.
In the coming weeks I plan on making another trip to Busch Gardens to check out Falcon's Fury. They ended up just opening the attraction instead of trying to have a grand opening date since it was already several months behind schedule. I definitely want to experience it for myself. Also, I'll have a special blog post in October about something I've been wanting to do for a couple years now. Some of you may know what I'm planning, but I don't have all the details figured out yet. Thanks for taking time to check out this post!
The Mine Train took over the space previously used for the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Submarine Voyage ride. I never had a chance to experience this attraction since it closed down in 1994. However, it seemed to be a fairly immersive attraction with some pretty interesting ride technology. It was also a very large attraction and so it's a little confusing as to why Disney waited 20 years before finally turning that precious, unused space into something useful again.
