family vacation 2011 day 2: sea world

i'll admit it.  initially, john and i were not that excited about going to sea world.  we are just not fans of being outside for long periods of time in the heat, along with hordes of other people.  so we went into it with low expectations.

we were pleasantly surprised.

we had a really fun time.  now it was HOT and there were hordes of people, but neither were too aggravating.  there were plenty of opportunities to get wet and cool off.

and there was plenty to see and do.  we learned pretty early on that with 5 adults and 3 kids, we had to prioritize what we wanted to see and do.  first up was the new "sesame street bay of play."  porkchop is a huge elmo lover and running through all the water was appealing to my crew.  coincidentally, on the way there i had the thought to review my cell phone number with noodle in case we were separated.  sea world is a big place.  after playing in the water stuff for a few minutes, john and i realized that we no longer knew the location of noodle.

that horrible pit of your stomach feeling sank in as we split up looking for him.  and this is why we lost him:

and this is just a small portion of the sesame street part.  there were lots of tunnels like these here that the kids could climb through.  after a few minutes of desperately searching around, we found him and he quickly learned that he would not be allowed to leave our sight the rest of the day.

despite that one little crazy moment, the rest of the day was fun and enjoyable.

love this shot of noodle

look close to see burrito

look close to see noodle

i think cousin porkchop was a little overwhelmed.  he didn't know what to do first!

the boys were so excited to ride their first roller coaster, the shamu express.  it was pretty tame and basically did this little loop twice.

gotta love burrito's expression here!

so after our time in sesame street world we headed over to the shamu show.  we knew we definitely wanted to see this!  but before we made it over there, the boys were distracted by this:

 they were a little too short to ride it, but they took full advantage of getting splashed!

these pics were taken in chronological order.  here you see the water coming.

starting to get splashed

now you can barely see them in all that water!

it was a really great way to cool off i would say!  now, on to shamu!

love these boys waiting for the show to start!

 we really liked this show, partly because it was our first of the day and partly because these whales are so BIG!  it was really fun to watch them perform.

after the shamu show, we were so hungry we thought we could eat shamu!  so we headed to grab a bite and plan our next few hours at sea world.  the boys scarfed down their lunch served on a souvenir plate and off we went to the sea lion show.  i remember seeing this show as a kid and i think burrito enjoyed this one because of the silly humor.

 the animals didn't always cooperate so it was funny to us adults to watch and see how the adult performers had to ad lib a bit.  below is a picture of the walrus doing sit-ups!

at this point in our sea world adventure it is about 2:00 and 1000 degrees so our group decides to split up.  john and i take the boys to the water park, and my sister and parents took porkchop back to the sesame street water park (he seriously loves elmo!).  after a little cool down, we meet back up to go feed the dolphins.  i was curious to see if the boys would be squeamish about picking up dead fish.

umm, no.

the fish were gone in a matter of seconds.  i barely had a chance to take these pictures.

 

the last show was a great way to end our day.  it featured dolphins and a beluga whale and a group of acrobatic swimmers and divers.  there was this really funny guy that entertained the crowd before the show, and this is what burrito is watching in this picture below.  it turns out that he was a part of the actual show and a fantastic diver.  it was so amazing, i forgot to take anymore pictures, oops!

we of course could not leave without making a quick trip to the souvenir store and all 3 boys chose to take home shamu!

thanks sea world for a surprisingly fun day!  and the next day we were off to the beach!