Wednesday: Day 5 (10/22/14) Sea World

Recently a documentary came out about Sea World and all it's secrets and how horrible the animals are treated in captivity. Yes I agree that Orca's really shouldn't be in captivity because they are such a large mammal that is so used to a much bigger environment, and the tanks are just not big enough for them. But despite all of that it is a really fun place to take the boys.

As we were walking up to pay for tickets (which by the way I was really excited that kids were free for the month of October), Ryker was acting so excited I thought he was going to cry. I even asked him if he was crying.

About a year and a half ago Heidi, Uncle Christian, Aunt Mel, Sarah and myself came with the boys here. And since then Sea World had remodeld the entrance of the park.

They now have these touch tanks that have Bamboo Sharks in one....

...and these little fish that eat the dead skin off of your hands. Right off the bat the boys were in heaven. Especially with the sharks.

They both really like sharks, so the first stop we had to make was to the Shark Encounter.

This was probably one of my favorites. I love Sea Turtles so much and to see them like this is pretty cool. Granted in the wild it's far cooler, but this takes a very close second. I find the turtles so fascinating. And of course so do the boys. Their 2 favorites are sharks and turtles. So of course those two exhibits were a must see first for them.

Another place that we spent most of our day was at the Bat Ray pool.  I remember last time we were here Ryker was extremely nervous to touch the rays, where Cy wasn't. But this time both of them were really brave and eager to touch them. It's really cool to see their excitement when they would touch one. Then they got really brave and wanted to feed them. So we bought 4 dinky pieces of fish for $5 (seriously?) and fed the rays.

Right by the Ray Pool is a roller coaster ride. So Jesse and I took Ryker on it, while Heidi stay behind at the bat pool with Cy. The line to the roller coaster ride was non-existent, we were able to just walk right on. Ryker BARELY hit the height mark to be able to ride. But hey, he was tall enough and that's pretty cool. I was excited that he was able to ride. He chose to ride with Jesse and I sat behind them. It had been a long time since I had been on a roller coaster ride and I used to be all for the crazy fast ones and it never affected me. This coaster was pretty fast and I could tell I would be sick if I did it too many times. Jesse got off and was feeling worse than I was. Haha, I guess that's what happens as you get older. Kinda lame.

When we finished the ride we noticed that the line was still gone, so we asked if we could go again, and they let us. I had to talk Jesse into going again. He was a good sport and came anyway. Ryker rode with me this time and it was fun to hear him giggling the whole time.

We get back to the bat pool and find Mom and Cyrus, and then we realize that the Shamu Show was starting in 5 minutes. So we rush over there. It was probably really funny to see us running around trying to figure out which way the Shamu Stadium was located. One of us would say "Oh it's this way", and we would run 30 feet and realize it was the other direction. Haha. What a bunch a goofs.

Cy and I were ahead of Jesse, Mom and Ryker. We got to the stadium and we see that it's really full. Which is what I expected since we were late. I had a hold of Cyrus' hand scanning the stadium for a good place for us to sit. When everyone else caught up with us I let go of Cy's hand thinking he would follow behind Jesse to go sit down. We all sit down and I realize that Cyrus is not with us. Panic. We are amongst hundreds of people and Cy is going to be hard to spot. He could have gone in any direction, I was feeling totally lost as to which direction I should start looking.

Mom finds a Sea World worker to tell them we can't find our little boy. We give them a description of his clothing and his age and he then got on his radio to tell the other workers.

While mom and I are looking throughout the Stadium, Jesse had told Ryker to stay in his seat while he came to help. He decided to go outside of the stadium the way that we came in. After about 2 or 3 minutes of searching, I see Jesse across the stadium carrying Cyrus. What relief. We told the S.W. workers that he was found.  Thank Goodness. I told Cy how scared he made me, and I could tell that he himself was scared.

Then the show started. I couldn't help but hold Cyrus tight in my lap feeling grateful that he was found. I know it was only 2 minutes or so, but it felt too long.

Not to be a downer, but the Shamu Show was pretty lame. In the past they do so many flips and give a great show, but this time they just swam around the tank and splashed everybody. The coolest thing we saw them do was jump up straight in the air. I think there was maybe one of the Orcas that did do a flip or two, but nothing like the shows used to be.

Because we were so late getting seats the only ones available were in the "Splash Zone". Well we definitely got splashed. We were all soaked. Which I guess was nice because it was a hot day. The boys thought it was pretty funny.

We headed over to the Arctic Section of Sea world. And by this point, the boys were loving having soaking wet shirts on. So.... we let them go shirtless. Not sure if that's ethical or not, but we went with it.

The Beluga whales were really cool to watch. Except they kept the place so cold. I guess they need it to feel like how it would be in the wild. But we weren't enjoying it because we were wet.

There was a new section that they had made specifically for little kids with a bunch of kiddy rides. Jesse and I each took a turn going with the boys. Ryker was big enough to ride alone, but Cy wasn't. Then we went on one all together that was suppose to be a spinning one, but we didn't really want to spin. When Ryker found out we weren't going to spin, so before the ride started he wanted to go in his own. Before he got out I asked the ride attendant to take our picture.

Cyrus must have had extra weight in his head on this day because he tripped several times. The last time he hit his lip just right on the concrete and resulted in a big fat lip.

That didn't stop him though. He just kept on going.

I guess in October the Park closes a lot sooner. So by 5:00 we had to leave. Just before it was time to go we made one last stop a the tide pools to see the starfish.

After we left the park we all went to dinner. The sun was almost down so it was feeling a little chilly and with our shirts being a little damp. When we went into Chili's we asked for the warmest part of the restaurant. Haha. Thankfully that worked. We weren't too cold in the restaurant.

What a fun day!