Our Sea World Visit on Christmas

Now that I'm feeling a bit better than I have in the past two weeks, I have a belated post about our family's Christmas day Sea World visit! It was what I call a very quick planned trip, since Steve decided on Tuesday before Christmas that we'd go to Sea World on Christmas Day. He set up getting the 3 of us a room for an overnight stay, and I contacted our pet sitters for a couple of visits. Since Dad wasn't going to be in town for Christmas, and he was visiting with his sister in the Panhandle, going away on Christmas wasn't going to be a problem for us! We got up early Christmas day and headed over to Orlando to check in early in at the hotel, to drop our things off and to head over to Sea World. We opted to drive to the park, rather than take their shuttle bus. That way, we could come and go as we pleased without having to wait! (If we had been at WDW and staying on WDW property, we would have used the WDW transport system!)

As soon as we were in Sea World, Steven booked for the Manta! (He rode the Manta and Kraken about 23 times combined!) There's a viewing area of stingrays and shrimp and seahorses not too far from the Manta in the Stingray Aquarium, so Steve and I headed there. I took a few pictures of the stingrays, seahorses, and shrimp, but I'm not too sure which of the two shrimp I took a picture that morning. (They looked so similar to me.) They had such cute names, like Peppermint Shrimp and Scarlet Cleaner Shrimp.  Son continued to ride the Manta and went to the Kraken, too. I rode the Sky Tower by myself with a group of Asian tourists, since Steve's not too crazy about heights! I love the view that I had of Sea World and the surrounding area in Orlando! It was nice, but too short of a ride, in my opinion. The places that we visited after my Sky Tower ride were Seaport Theater (where the animals who are in the show are rescued animals) and the Sea Lion and Otter Stadium.

Steve and I had seats in the Seaport Theater close to the back, and we were able to see the one cat go from near our heads to the stage! We didn't take any pictures while we were there. It's a really nice show, for kids of all ages! Next, was the pre-show for Clyde and Seamore at the Sea Lion and Otter Stadium, the mime! I love watching the mime interact with the guests! I couldn't stop laughing, he was walking some of them from one entrance to the exit! He mimicked one guy who was on his cellphone, and then he took the cellphone away from the guy, pretending to talk with someone who couldn't hear him. The show was great and I just love the little otter in the show.  At some point, we caught up with Steven, and decided to have lunch at the Terrace Garden Buffet. There was pizza, pasta, salad (pre-made), and cookies/fruit pizza, along with tea and soda. It was okay, but not my favorite, due to all of the carbs (not friendly for one trying to watch sugars and carbs).

We stopped in the games area, and were given a few tickets to play some games. Steven tried the baseball one, and we both did the frog game. I really didn't do well, and we didn't win anything. (Oh well!We did try!) Onto Shamu Stadium and the killer whales!  Before Shamu and the other trainers came out, they showed a message on the sidebars of the screen that if you texted a certain number to one of the names on the sidebar with a name, it would show up! I must have texted Steven's name multiple times, and he wasn't too humored! Anything to drive my boy crazy! The show was great, and I enjoyed seeing the interact of the trainers with the whales. It's sad that the one trainer died due to the one killer whale, I can't remember the whale's name.

We looked around in some of the shops, and I can't believe that I didn't buy anything. We went to the Shark Encounter, the Penguin Encounter (my favorite! I love penguins!), and back to the Sea Lion and Otter Stadium, to see the Christmas show. I did some recording of the mime during the pre show, but haven't uploaded it to YouTube yet---sometime in the next week. We didn't get to the Pacific Point Preserve, that's where the sea lions are in abundance and you can feed them, for a small fee. The Polar Express Experience is nice, too, but we went there the previous year. I missed seeing the beluga whale and the puffins. We ended our evening with watching the Sea of Trees, music synched to the lights on the trees in the water. It was pretty. I took some video of the Sea of Trees, too. We headed out of the park after that to get dinner and then back to our room. It was a nice Christmas Day!