When we first walked into the park, we saw this costumed polar bear taking pictures with tourists. Being tourists, we decided to get our picture taken with it too.
The polar bear was pretty playful!
After seeing the polar bear, we already knew that the first thing we wanted to do was go to see the Clydesdale horses (Anheuser Busch owns Sea World) on our way to the watery roller coaster ride "Journey to Atlantis." My oldest son had an upset stomach the previous time we were at Sea World, and so my second son and wife had gone then. My son could hardly stop talking about how awesome it was, and that it was his first time on a "grown up ride." He had the whole family excited to see it when we went back.
We had a pleasant time seeing the horses up close and learning a little bit about them. For instance, in order to be on one of the teams that gets to pull the famed Budweiser wagons, the horse has to be at least 6 ft tall at the shoulder (I think that's 15 to 16 hands in horse measurements), be a certain shade of tan or brown, and have a white stripe on its face and head. We also saw a comparison of a standard horse shoe to a Clydesdale horse shoe. A standard horse shoe is about 3 to 4 inches across. A Clydesdale horse shoe is about 12 to 14 inches across. They are roughly the size of frisbees, and even the oversized horse shoes I've used to play the tossing game of horse shoes are smaller, not to mention far lighter. It was fun to see.
After the horses, we made our way to "Journey to Atlantis." We had determined that I would go on the ride with the older boys while my wife, daughter, and youngest waited for us. As this was the Friday before Memorial Day, it was much busier than it had been on Tuesday. While enduring the nearly half hour wait in line, I noticed several signs saying that you had to be at least 42 inches tall to ride the roller coaster. I thought that my daughter was nearly that tall, so I had the boys go and get her. We put her against the sign, and it appeared that she was about 41.5 inches tall, which I thought would be good enough.
When we reached the boarding area, we saw a man who, judging by his baseball cap, is a fan of the University of New Mexico. He was arguing with the park employees about getting his little boy onto the ride. The employees brought out a yardstick to measure in addition to the signs, and the kid was obviously no more than 39 inches tall. This man, however, was determined to show the park employees who was boss. We spent at least 5 minutes as the line moved watching him make a fool of himself trying to get his son on the ride. Questions like, "What if I can make him look like he's 42 inches tall? Would you let him ride then?" escaped his mouth, among other oddities. When we reached the head of the line, the employees had no choice but to check my daughter's height and deny her entry to the ride due to the poor sport, who was still wheedling nearby.
I couldn't just send my girl back to her mother with her hopes crushed, so I sent the boys on the roller coaster and waited my turn behind Mr. Belligerent for the head employee to talk to me. After finally offering Mr. Belligerent many benefits elsewhere in the park and getting him to leave, she came up to me and asked how many were in my group. I replied that there were six of us, and she gave us her business card with the following benefits written on the back: Front-of-the-line passes to the Sesame Street kids rides in the playground area of the park, free sky tram passes for the whole family, and free tower ride passes for the whole family. I thanked her kindly and took my daughter back to my wife, arriving just in time to see my boys come splashing down the final descent of the roller coaster. My daughter was pretty quickly mollified to learn that we'd be getting to go on the sky tram and tower rides, as we had planned on skipping those due to the extra cost.
I still think Mr. Belligerent was in the wrong in the way he acted, but I didn't turn down the extra benefits as I thought it was nice of the employee to offer them for having to put up with his antics while waiting for her.
We made our way over to the killer whale show, making sure to sit close enough to get splashed this time. We were fortunate that we were near one of the sides, as the majority of the splashing occurs in the middle of the arena. We were splashed once, lightly, and that was just about right for us. The show followed the same pattern as the previous time, but with several different tricks performed by the whales. Once again, it was a true delight to watch.
Following the whale show, my oldest and I went on a white water rapids type of ride while the younger kids petted starfish. We saw sea turtles, rode the sky tram over the bay, rode the tower ride, and went to see the sharks.
The shark exhibit has a tunnel going through the middle of their pool, so you get to be surrounded by them and see them from underwater. This picture shows just how close they get!
We made sure to visit the Sesame Street 4D movie that was showing at the park. I quickly discovered that a 4D movie is one that is in 3D on the screen and also has seating that vibrates and shoots water and air bursts on you at the correct times. It was pretty fun.
As the day started to wind down, we wanted to see the penguins and the Wild Arctic exhibits, as well as visit the Sesame Street play area and rides. This is when the part of our day that I will call "crappy" began.
The penguins that require cold water (we learned that there are several species of penguins that live in the tropic and sub-tropic areas of the southern hemisphere and don't require cold) and southern hemisphere lighting (near darkness since it's getting to be winter down there) are behind this glass. You can see several penguins standing and some swimming. One of the swimming penguins that I happened to be watching suddenly emitted a brownish cloud behind it. Lucky me.
The polar bear in the Wild Arctic area was napping when we first arrived. As we watched, though, it slowly woke and stretched, shown here. After finally rising to its feet, it sauntered toward the back, where its cave was, when it decided to stop, rear end facing the window we were watching from, squat (if you can imagine a four legged animal squatting its hind legs), and let loose a large batch of material that it hadn't digested. The only thing missing was the steam that would have risen from the scat had we actually been in the Arctic. The kids all groaned and exclaimed "Eww, gross!" whilst the adults laughed.
The Wild Arctic exhibit also had walruses (one of which we saw pushing some brown clod-like thing around on the window right in front of us with its mouth until it managed to eat it) and some beluga whales (shown above, which we did not see do anything disgusting).
One really interesting aspect of several of the exhibits at Sea World is that they are designed to allow you to view the animals from both above and below water. This way, you get to see them as mankind has since the beginning of time, and you also get to see some of the sights normally reserved for divers. Seeing the ease of movement underwater easily made up for also happening to see their bodily functions. As I said at the time we witnessed the polar bear doing its business, "Hey, that's what I do after a nap, too, and it's not like they provided a toilet!"
We finished the day off playing at the playground and riding the kids rides. My youngest also got to have another of his "firsts" in life (hint: it's not going on a ride).
Cotton candy! I love it!
Getting ready to ride our last ride of the day. I Love Mommy!
As my wife's birthday would be during our traveling home part of our vacation, we decided to go to dinner at Tony Roma's to celebrate her after we left Sea World. We found a Tony Roma's right next to the beach a few miles from Sea World, and we happened to walk up to the wall separating the road from the beach just as two local entertainers started performing a fire juggling show. We watched for 3 or 4 minutes before heading into the restaurant, departing with my oldest shouting "You guys were great!" and one of them replying "Thank you!"
We used the last of our AMEX gift cards from Wednesday to help pay for the meal at Tony Roma's, and it took long enough that the kids were falling asleep at the table. We arrived back at the resort well and truly exhausted, but we also felt that we had enjoyed our time to the best of our ability!
One more to come later.
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