Sea World!!

On Tuesday Andy and I drove to San Antonio to visit Andy's best friend from college, Brittany.  Unfortunately, it took us a little longer than we had expected to get there thanks to traffic.  It really surprised me how many people were on I-10 at 2:00 on a Tuesday afternoon, but I guess that's the world we live in.  Once we got to her apartment, we hung out for a little while letting Maddie play outside with Haley (Brittany's dog).  We ate at El Chaparral a Mexican food restaurant in Helotes which is near Brittany's apartment.  It was quite delicious!  Then we went back to the apartment and just hung out talking until midnight.

Typical car shot of us on our way to SA!

Brittany is in senior management at Sea World, and she works on the education side.  She's what I would consider a "big dog" at Sea World.  We would have gotten into Sea World for free since we are both teachers, but Brittany also gets free passes for her guests.  We went to every show except for the Elmo and Seasame Street shows.  We did not get on any rides or go to Aquatica the waterpark.  Neither one of us had been to Sea World since the mid-90s and a lot has changed since then.  Most of the shows were still pretty typical for Sea World, but we had so much fun.

Since we had a connection with an employee at Sea World, we got to do some behind the scenes things.  Brittany met up with us first thing when the park opened and showed us the coral reefs and shark tanks from above like where the divers would actually get in.  It was so cool!  The Tiger Sharks were so large from this viewpoint.  I mean, they look huge when you actually look at them inside the aquarium facility, but they look even larger at the surface of the water.

After lunch, Brittany met up with us again and watched the Shamu show.  Then she took us behind the scenes to several holding tanks that they have for the marine life who aren't in the shows.  We got to see a baby dolphin!  So cute!  I couldn't get a picture of it though; it moved too quickly for me.  Then we got to touch a shark - eek!!  Actually, it was a small shark called a White Spotted Bamboo Shark.  I didn't take a picture, but here is one I found on the Internet.

Then we fed... yes fed like fed them food... sting rays.  This was by far my favorite thing of the day!  Brittany gave us shrimp and we had to hold it between our pointer finger and middle finger so that it was just barely stuck.  The sting ray would then cover your hand and suck up the food with its mouth.  This was really cool!  Seriously!  After Andy and I fed them we just touched them in the water.  They have no bones in their bodies so they are made up entirely of cartilage. All of the barbs on their stingers had been removed, but it was still a little freaky.  Andy actually touched the stinger, and he said it actual felt flimsy even though they look rock hard as they are swimming.

We got to the park around 10:30am and didn't leave until after 8:30pm.  We had such a great time!  It was just like being a little kid all over again.  I told Andy that we will definitely have to take our kids one day to Sea World.

I have a TON of pictures, but I will try to post only the best ones on here, so bare with me!  No, seriously... I had 200 pictures and I think I got it under 30.  Not sure if I'll post all of them.  LOL

Brittany, Andy, and I waiting on the Shamu show

The first show we went to was the water ski show.  It really fascinates me what people can do on the water behind a boat.  This show was similar to what I remember as a child.

We went to the sea lion and otter show.  We actually saw them twice.  The first show was their normal show and the evening show was a spoof of all the other shows at Sea World.  Both shows were funny!

Brittany told us that this is a female walrus and the
male walrus they have is much much larger.

I don't remember if this one was Clyde or Seamore...

Another show we saw was the Beluga and Pacific White-sided Dolphins.  This show was probably the most disappointing show because there were divers who did a lot stunts.  Don't get me wrong, the stunts were really cool and they did some diving from pretty high up, but I wanted to see more of the animals.

And of course, we saw Shamu!  Just like the sea lions, we saw this show twice.  One was the typical afternoon show and then we saw the evening show which was Shamu Rocks.  The evening show was more entertaining because the whales did a lot more jumps.  These creatures are so massive that they are fascinating to watch.  Plus, Brittany gave us a lot of statistics about them so it made them even more fun to watch.  The whale with the bent top fin is the biggest whale at Sea World San Antonio.  His father actually weighs 12,000 pounds, so they are expecting him to be even bigger!

It's amazing how they can get their entire body out
of the water and flip in the air.  They are moving at great speeds under the water to do this!

The Shamu show would not be complete if he didn't
splash you.  That's A LOT of water!!
We stayed out of the splash (drench) zone.