Zoo Full of Boys: Day 1: Sea World

Day one of our vacation to sunny Florida, had us visiting all the critters at Sea World. (And let me point out that the ticket price for Sea World is insane! We would not have gone if not for the "Salute the Heroes" tickets.)

We got to pet the dolphins.

This is the dolphin nursery. There were a couple of juveniles and several round "Mommies." The momma dolphins would occasionally do a trick or two which was so sweet.

Here's one of the Busch Clydesdales. These horses are huge! I heard the "clop, clop, clop" behind me and was completely gobsmacked when I turned around. The guy handling the reins was over 6 feet tall.

Last time I was at Sea World, I saw a baby sea lion born in this very tank. The keepers had to jump in and grab him because all the female sea lions started fighting over the new cub. Now you can buy fish and feed the sea lions.....none of my crew wanted to touch dead fish so we just watched.

We did touch these though.

These are cownose rays and are quite a bit bigger than the ones at the Georgia Aquarium. Sam was the most prolific "ray toucher." They seem to go out of their way to swim up to him.

Did you know that Sea World now has rides? This is the Kraaken.

The orange shirt in the second to the last seat is the oldest boy. This was his first roller coaster.....ever. It was a bad choice.

The things scared the heck out of him. He used it to compare every ride afterwards, "It wasn't as bad as the Kraaken."

And in an even worse moment of judgement, we took all the boys on this ride.

The Journey to Atlantis. Even I freaked out because I thought it was just one drop and that was the whole ride. Nope.

There's three drops...all about this high. And there's a roller coaster part inside the building...in the dark.

I'll have to scan the picture of us from the ride to show you the children's looks of abject terror.

I felt so bad afterwards. But they were able to ride a lot more stuff in WDW that they would have because, "it's not as bad as the journey to Atlantis."

Then we visited the star of the place.

There's Shamu. And this was the last picture my old camera ever took. Right after this one, Shamu's Daddy came out and did a lap in the show tank.
Let's just say that....that whale can splash a lot of water with that tail of his.

And just for your information, 52 degree seawater does not have a good effect on video devices. I dropped the camera in my lap and covered the little ones when the water hit. (But at least I was better that the lady they featured on the jumbo tron....she hid behind her baby....who was small enough to wear a onesie. She's never going to live that one down.)

On our second day in FL, we had that freak weather that hit the southeast. It was too rainy to go to the parks, so I set out to buy a new camera.

So now instead of having lots of pictures like this.