What a great "mini vacation" I have had with my oldest daughter and grandson at Sea World this Spring Break! We had some free days "mid week" and thought we would come spend a day visiting this larger than life tourist attraction!!
I want to share some of my favorite photos and some good advice on what to do and not to do when you go there!!
We bought our tickets online! I would highly suggest doing that. When you get to the park it's much easier to just sail right in with "pre purchased" tickets than having to stop and wait in line. I went to a website called Retail Me Not to look for discounts to add while purchasing the tickets. By doing this we saved 25% on our one day tickets. Just type in Sea World.
I would also suggest to buy the Shamu's Preferred Parking. I think it was $10 more. We did and when we were leaving last night we were SO HAPPY to only have to walk two rows out to get to our car instead of hiking a half a mile back to the car.
We also bought the ALL DAY DINING for everyone that was with us. That's a HUGELY great idea. It seems a little pricey at first, but when you get there and see the prices on the menus, and when you are there from daylight till late at night, it's TOTALLY WORTH IT!! You get an entree, a side or dessert, and a drink. If you get thirsty during the day you can just walk in any of the restaurants and pick up a drink and show them your wristband and walk back out. It also means you don't have to carry a bunch of cash all day long or swipe your debit card a thousand times.
While on the subject of cash, if you have kids and you don't mind buying them those little toys they hawk up and down the aisles or will want some cotton candy etc....don't forget to put a little cash in your pocket. We had stashed our purses in the car and therefore only had debit cards much to the chagrin of my grandson who wanted a "bubble gun" and some cotton candy. We finally managed to go to one of the ATM'S before the end of the night and before the last show and he got his precious bubble gun.
We managed to see pretty much every attraction in the park in one day, but we didn't go to the larger rides like the roller coasters. I would suggest buying a season pass or two day tickets if you want to see every single "feeding" and show they have. We saw all but two shows and believe me, that added up to something like five shows.
The first show we saw was the One Ocean show! It was AWESOME. Hoowwwwever, we thought it would be FUN to sit on the third row from the bottom in the "Splash Zone"....we thought it would be a LITTLE splash, and NO BIG DEAL. Hahaha we were WRONG.....OMG we were DRENCHED. OVER AND OVER. It literally took a half a day for our clothes to dry out and a few hours for my camera to dry out and work again. Most of the seats say "splash zone" but the ones you really need to worry about in this show are on the bottom rows, the rest are fine.
We also saw the AZUL show....it was FABULOUS.
The only tip I have for that is don't sit in the middle of the stadium on the lower half if you don't want to get wet. Those poor folks got pretty wet. It was entertaining to those of us watching from afar, but I would not have wanted to be down there.
Every family has one kid who is silly.....this is my grandson who is six and didn't want me to take his pic so he put his mouth up next to the camera LOL
We also saw the Cannery Row Capers show and the Shamu Rocks show!
I would HIGHLY SUGGEST NOTTT sitting by this thing...which looks like an old fashioned water tower...unless once again...you want to get wet. It opens and splashes about the first 10 rows near it. We were nowhere near it thankfully. The only problem I have with that part of the show is they had a spot on the very bottom where some parents had put their handicapped children, they were in specialty strollers and had no way of trying to move out of the way....you would think they would have warned them that they were in the direct first line of fire when the water came out. These were kids who had no way of even sitting up by themselves. I would have had an issue with them had this been one of my kids.
The Shamu Rocks show was phenomenal!!
Along with the shows we went to the Sesame Street Bay of Play and my grandson rode the little rides there and played on their giant play area. The only big suggestion I would have for the Bay of Play is keep an EAGLE EYE out on your kid. It's so easy for them to get separated from you there. We were just standing there by the climbing nets when this tiny little girl who was about four came rolling down off of it because she was coming down too fast and she whacked the ground. Her mother was nowhere in site. We had to comfort her until her mother finally came running from who knows where. We temporarily lost site of my grandson as well when he crawled through one of the tunnels and ended up in some other part of the giant play area. There are a lot of entries and exits to this part of the play area and if you have small children keep an eye out. We went after dark and while it's fairly well lit it was still a little alarming at how many places kids could wander out at.
All in all it was a great time and TOTALLY worth the money!!
If you have any questions just leave me a comment and I will do my best to answer it!!
