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Published: October 26th 2008
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San Diego SeaWorld - our final theme park. Today's weather is in complete contrast to what we thought San Diego weather would be like - it's overcast, quite chilly and feels like it's about to rain - here we are thinking that it is always brilliantly sunny here...
Anyway, we get to SeaWorld just before opening at 10am and are greeted at the entrance gates by very grumpy, unfriendly staff who roughly search our bags & snatch our tickets without the usual friendly smile (they need to go to Disneyland for some retraining me thinks!)
First stop the Clydesdale Horses (yep, at a "Sea" World), then the girls want to go on some rides. Head over to the Atlantis ride only to discover it doesn't open unitl 11am. OK, we'll go in the opposite direction to see what we can find. Kill some time at the little kids playground which Jordi loves but Ashleigh thinks she is far too cool for then came across the Dolphin pool just when it was feeding time. Spent $6 on a couple of fish for the kids to feed to the gorgeous friendly dolphins hanging out around the edge of the pool. Some
people spent their $6 on fish for the cheeky birds who have learned that humans are stupid and will hang fish out in the air just for them to snatch - derrr! It ended up being quite worthwhile as we all got to touch the dolphins as well as feed them.
Next we thought we'd go on the River Rapid ride, but again found that this ride didn't open until mid-day despite there being a really long queue forming at 11.15. Our first impression of Sea World isn't all that flash and we were beginning to wonder what people see in this place. We finally got to ride, got completely drenched and growled at by the staff for moving too slow (what is it with SeaWorld staff - don't they like their jobs?).
By now it was time for the much hyped Shamu the Killer Whale show. We decided that as we were already soaked thru, we might as well sit in the section labelled as the "wet zone". I mean, how wet can we get sitting about 7 rows back??? Apparently VERY, VERY wet!!!! One of Shamu's tricks is to go around the pool and splash all
the crowds with gallons of water with his tail and flippers - the naughty boy!!! Some people, including really little kids were completely and utterly drenched from head to toe - not once, but several times. Luckily I had put our plastic poncho's in the backpack and we and our camera's were a little bit protected. Great fun and very touching show. These Orca's are just so beautiful and they are also really clever. Those young trainers don't know how lucky they are! And just why are they always so young and beautiful????
We spent the rest of the day zipping between shows, exhibits and rides (now that they finally opened), leaving the park at around 4pm.
On reflection, we decided that the Gold Coast Seaworld does a pretty good job with it's shows - apart from Shamu and the Cat/Dog show which they don't have, the Aussie version does a better job in it's Dolphin and Sea Lion performances. The newer exhibits at SD SeaWorld such as the Arctic section and Manatee tank were really good, but the rest of the park including the rollercoaster Atlantis were only hohum and a bit disappointing. Nevermind, been there, done
that........
Took a drive up to Mission Beach and Pacific Beach for a nosey poke before heading back to the hotel to finish packing and organising our last day in the USA tomorrow...
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