Sea World

Prior to our trip I couldn't for the life of me remember how old I was the last time that I visited Sea World.  I sort of remembered the last trip to the aquarium - we had gone to watch my cousin clog her way through California and on one fateful night, in our hotel room my uncle crouched down between the two beds and farted such a fart that I almost threw up and we had to vacate the room (with windows and door open and AC at full blast) for what felt like several hours for the stench to dissipate.  Anyway, I was probably still in high school, which means at least 15 years since my last visit to Sea World.

And guess what.  I don't thin that anything really changed in all those years.

Aquatic animals aren't my favorite.  Walking into dark cavernous buildings to stand right next to walls of water with fish gliding around makes me a little nervous.  And dizzy.  And I don't do sharks.  Period.  But watching the absolute joy and amazement and jaw dropping excitement in my kids faces when they saw Shamu jump out of the water for the first time, and then a bunch of whales splash hundreds of people with a wall of water just by flicking their tales, that was super cool.  And pretty priceless.  And I probably should have taken a picture of my kids watching Shamu instead of 30 pictures attempting to track with the whales and get their picture.

We spend one and a half days at Sea World.  One with the big family group and then a half day just the four of us.  We caught all the shows (Shamu twice!), saw all the animals and ate plenty of churros and popcorn.

One strange thing to note about Sea World - it is a split park.  Almost quite literally down the middle of the map, Sea World is separated into Coke and Pepsi products.  It was strange.  And, they just didn't have any good t-shirts for high school aged brothers with beluga whales on them.