Sea World!

I've always wanted to go to Sea World and we finally made it!   Not far from the entrance is a pool of dolphins - love it!

 

There is a huge lake in the middle of the property

one of the beautiful lilac trees was in full bloom - it's hard to see the purple color in the photo - but these trees are so pretty

we decided to go to the first Orca show, since the next one wasn't until 7:30 pm

These animals are so amazing!

But after only a couple tricks, the Orca's decided they didn't want to participate, and the 3 females hung out in the far corner of the show pool.  The 2 males were on the other side - all close together.  Not sure if it was due to the impending storm....   The trainers said that Orca's are very social and depend on their pack leader (in this case it's a 47 year old female that is the matriarch of the group).  She didn't want to play, so none of them would.  The females wouldn't even leave the show pool, after the gate was re-opened.  So this Orca show was cancelled.  I'm glad we got to see a couple tricks at least.

The storm turned out to be a big one!  We ran to a restaurant and had lunch (fortunately, we got a table).   And we waited out the storm - it took a couple hours to pass (with more storms on the way)

Once it wasn't pouring rain, we headed to some of the exhibits that were covered :).  Like this huge manta ray exhibit

some tiny sea dragons were there too

Chris having fun in the interactive fish tank :)

They had a pool where you could touch the ray's - I didn't get close enough, but I tried.  I think they were tired of people touching them, so they stayed deep and just out of reach.  Unless you wanted to put your whole arm in the tank - no thanks.

we saw another dolphin pool - this one had some wave action

one guy kept swimming around on his side

we could also see them under the water - love it!

this guy still on his side or back :)

then it was time to see the sea cows - manatees

big guys!  Feeding time, so the water was a little messy

they had some cool sea turtles too.  We saw one of these on our sailing trip to BVI - but it was a quick sighting.  They can stay under for so long!

On top of the pools - we saw the manatees again.  This one was SO huge!  just floating along on his back - not a care in the world

They also do a lot of rescue work at Sea World

these manatees were rescues and needed to be hand fed.  So they would drain the pool, and then walk around hand feeding them.  Then they refill the pool

we saw a sea lion show

Then it was back underground for the shark tunnel

so cool!

above ground, they had a pool of baby sharks

Then we entered the frozen zone - to see some walrus's (we didn't) and the beluga whales (we did)

then it was time for the dolphin show!!

these guys had so much fun, leaping and dancing

back to the arctic zone.  We did kind of wander all around and back & forth.  Between the rain storms, and animal shows, we were kind of all over the place.  Lots of walking!

we didn't ride any of the rides.  They were shut down for a large part of the day due to the storms.  And we are just getting too old for roller coasters & twisty rides.  Vertigo is not our friend and we didn't want to set it off :)

the penguin's room was COLD.  We didn't stay too long - Brrr!

we found the sea lions after that.  They all seemed to be sleeping :)

 and since we had to take a few hours out from exploring during the rain storms - we were still there at 7:30 for the last Orca show.  Originally, we thought we would be long gone - but we weren't :)

The orcas were ready to play this time - yay!

what a fun experience!  One thing that we bought that we wouldn't do again - is the meal plan.  Many of the restaurants were closed, so we only had a couple places where we could eat.  Not cool.  We obviously didn't starve - but it wasn't worth the extra $$

back to the hotel - we weren't tired - so we walked around the Everglades, and checked out the baby alligator exhibit.  Always love looking at critters :)