Our Orlando theme park escapades began at Sea World the home of Shamu, the Killer Whale from the film Free Willy.

It was only a fifteen-minute drive from our accommodatiom as we arrived we marvelled at the sheer number of car parking spaces available as, being early, we drove up the car park and parked almost outside the door.

Once inside the park our first stop of the day was the Sky Tower. This ‘ride’ took us in a moving carriage to the top of a tall tower allowing us to overlook the park as the commentary told us about the things we could see.

There were a couple of must do big rides and a number of shows to watch. One of the shows, Pets Ahoy, featured a pig. With uncle John’s pig fascination (he’s been collecting them for years) we had to go and see it. The show featured dogs and cats jumping ropes, running around the stage switching things on and off. It was very clever but much more for kids than adults. We sat and dutifully waited for the pig’s grand appearance only to find it made a very brief entrance at the end, didn’t do any tricks and was that quick I didn’t even get a picture!

The main show of the day was the ‘Believe’ Shamu show. It was held in a massive packed stadium. The show was pretty good. Some of the stunts were fantastic and the trainers obviously had a lot of fun swimming with the Wales. Before they brought out Shamu the crowd was hyped up chanting Shaumu, Shamu. He made his appearance performing jumps in the middle of the tank then moving around the edge sending massive amounts of water into the audience. I was shocked to realise just how big Killer Whales are. The show finished with a song telling everyone to believe in their dreams whilst the whales performed stunts in the middle of the tank.

We also watched a fantastic acrobatic show featuring a dancing spring, acrobat penguins and some girls bending into positions I didn’t think were possible!

The last show we watched was the dolphin show. This again was pretty impressive although I’d seen a lot of dolphin stunts in Australia and there are only certain things you can make a dolphin do! But it was a very good show with some form of storyline, lots of acrobatics and people flying around the stadium on strings!

We also spent some time playing on the rides. The log flume was fantastic. Whilst queuing there were signs telling us we’d get soaked, I didn’t pay a lot of attention knowing that on most log flumes you get splashed a bit. How wrong I was! The ride began fairly sedately then we came to the last big drop, as we hit the bottom a wave of water came over the front of the boat and landed right in my lap! Moving around the flume there were some water jets operated by people watching, they had a pretty good shot and got every part of me that wasn’t already soaked, then another much smaller drop sent even more water into the boat ensuring we were all well and truly soaked!! Afterward we had a go on the Kraken (massive roller coaster) just to dry off a bit. It was a fairly good roller coaster although noting compared to some of the ones I’ve been on. Having never been on anything like it before Uncle John really didn’t want to go but got coerced into it. And I think despite his misgivings he secretly enjoyed it!!

All in all a pretty good day. We even managed to spend some time looking at the animals. My favourite were the Manatees.

* Posted by j150vsc on 23/05/2008.
* 1 comment