Hotels & Trave

Disappointed by Sea World in Florida Sea World Florida

There is Just One Moon and One Golden Sun!! It’s a Small World You all know the song: "It's a world of laughter, a world of tears; I...

There is Just One Moon and One Golden Sun!! It’s a Small World You all know the song: "It's a world of laughter, a world of tears; I...

I know I am probably going to be in the minority when I say that I was not thrilled with Sea World. But, unfortunately, I have to say that it is true. It was not one of my favorite experiences. When I visited there 12 years ago, it was much more fun and I looked forward to sharing the experience with my children. Sad to say but we were all quite disappointed.

Tickets and Parking

I purchased my tickets online before I left for my trip. I found a deal that I could get adult tickets for the child ticket prices. Child tickets were $57.95 and adult tickets were supposed to be $67.95 but I paid the $57.95 price for all three tickets and it worked out just fine. I printed out my tickets right from my home computer and made sure to bring them with me on the day of my visit. When we arrived, we found that we also had to pay for parking. It cost $10 to park on the lot for regular parking or $25 if you wanted valet parking. I chose the $10 parking and as we arrived just when they opened, we got a decent parking spot and were able to simply walk to the entrance gate. When I was leaving, I noticed that they offered a tram to those who had had to park farther away.

Entrance

The first thing you must do before entering Sea World is to have your bags checked. Any bag you are carrying including a fanny pack is subject to and will need to be opened for inspection. I have to say that I was quite annoyed as I was in line to have my bag checked. The inspector checked the person’s bag in front of me and I had my bag open on the table and the inspector walked away telling me she was now closed! I had to switch lines and wait again. It was hard to move with my backpack and my fanny pack already opened and ready to go but I did it and had my bag inspected by a pleasant and friendly inspector. Then, as I was leaving the station, the original lady re-opens her line! I was so annoyed with this. How can you just close a line when there are already people in it without any warning? This was the way my day started!

The tickets that I had pre-printed out worked just fine. I was warned not to bend or otherwise damage the bar code that was on my printed paper and even though one did have a slight crease, it still worked. The thing that I did not like though was that each person had to scan their own ticket. There was no employee from Sea World there to really assist or handle this for you. Well, there was one employee but there were at least 10 scanners and there was no way that this one employee could really do much unless you really got stuck! She was basically there to make sure no one crashed through the gates.

Attractions and Shows

The first attraction we went to was the sea lion show called “The Clyde and Seamore Show.” They tried to make this show into a story about a sea creature and a stranded tourist but the story was weak. I went to see the animals and I didn’t feel that the animals were the main attraction of this show but rather the people playing their parts were. The animals didn’t do a lot of tricks t hat I know that they are capable of doing. The storyline took precedence. In addition, the actors forgot lines, giggled through lines and were all over not very professional. Many scenes they called out “re-do” and then they re-played the scenes!

Next we went to the Penguin exhibit. Walking into the exhibit I immediately noticed a smell of urine and it was not appealing from the start. In addition, it was very dark as we entered from the bright sunlight and thus hard to know where you’re going at first. There is an electric sidewalk that takes you past windows where you can see penguins behind glass. This was pretty neat but not at all interactive nor educational. Then we are to walk through the puffin section. This is a similar setup with the puffins behind glass but no electric sidewalk to move the people past so it got very crowded and no one was moving along thus making it hard for young children to get close enough to see anything.

Next we decided to see the show called “Blue Horizons.” This was supposed to be a dolphin show but I found it way to artsy. It was supposed to be a story but no story really seemed to be told as no words were spoken throughout. It was all set to music and there seemed to be a lot of ballet type dancing. There were also acrobats on bungee cords and trapezes and cables doing tricks and also diving. The diving appeared to be nothing special just plain diving. We saw the animals very little during this show and being that this was SEA WORLD, this was disappointing to us. The dolphins did only a few basic tricks. Funny thing is that when the show ended, we almost couldn’t even tell that it was over as their was no closure or spectacular finish or anything! Oh, and the “splash zone” barely got wet at all!

By this time, the kids were getting tired and cranky and hot. We were going to go get some lunch but then my husband was reading the schedule and noticed that there was a Sesame Street show that would start at 12:30. I told him, “we’re hungry…we’ll catch the next show.” He told me that that was the last show of the day! How silly that the show only ran 3 times in the morning hours! So, we rushed over there and thankfully, it was an air conditioned theatre so we were able to cool off a bit. This Sesame Street show was a good one, thankfully and my 2 year old thoroughly enjoyed it. My 8 year old wouldn’t admit it to her friends but she liked it too. It was cute! It starred Elmo, Cookie Monster, Grover, Abby Cadabie, and Rosita. The characters sing and dance and interact with the audience as they tell a story about opening a treasure box. The set was a beach scene so I figure this is how they decided it fit into the Sea World theme. Still, it is sad to me that one of the best parts of the SEA WORLD park was a Sesame Street show!!!

The next show we were able to see was “Believe!” which is the show with “Shamu” in it. In reality, there are many whales in the show. There was never an announcement about which whale we were seeing and if any of them were really “Shamu.” In the past, my husband remembers them saying that the smaller whales were offspring and the biggest whale that did the most tricks was the real “Shamu.” Since none of the whales really did anything different from the others, it was difficult to tell anything. While waiting for the show to begin, there were trivia questions and video on large screen tvs that were somewhat entertaining. As for the show itself, we remember Shamu doing more tricks such as jumping to touch a ball that was over his head and waving with his fins. We did not see these tricks mostly just the whales swimming and splashing with their tales. Also, the tvs were going through the whole show and I felt that this was somewhat distracting. At one point, a spokesperson came on the screen and made a speech about “believe” taking emphasis off of the animals to distract the audience, breaking the momentum of the show. I also felt that there was very little explanation about what was going on and what the animals could do. There was nothing about what the animals are and seemed to be more about what human actors could do.

As far as other attractions go, there were a few rides in the park, a roller coaster and a flume ride. My children were neither interested in nor tall enough to ride these rides, however. Additionally, we heard an announcement that the flume ride was temporarily malfunctioning but to stay in line as they would have it fixed soon. This would not make me feel too confident to ride this ride.

We saw a few other animal exhibits but none were terribly interesting nor educational. We went to see the shark exhibit but it was so crowded and we were getting terribly frustrated with the park at this point that we just bypassed it.

The only other area of interest to small children was the Happy Harbor area. Unfortunately, this is an area where children get very wet while playing and we noticed many of the children in this area in a bathing suits. We did not know about this and did not bring bathing suits so we were not really able to take advantage of this part of the park. Oh, there is a carousel in this area and it has sea animals to ride and we did that but it had to be the shortest carousel ride I have ever ridden. It took longer to board the ride and for the attendant to make sure everyone had their seatbelt on (on a carousel??!!) than it took for the ride itself There were also some carnival games that one could pay to play.

Other Problems

One of the most annoying things I saw in the park were areas that you had to pay extra to participate in. I paid a huge entrance fee and now you want me to pay $7 so my child can jump on a large trampoline or climb a rock wall? This does not seem right and I hate to compare but you would never find such practices in Disney World. Additionally, there is an observation tower that you have to pay extra to ride up in. My daughter was disappointed when I would not pay extra money for the add-ons but she got over it when she found out it meant we could then afford to do something else fun later.

Additionally, I found the park map was not terribly helpful nor were the signs in the park Some signs in the park seemed to lead to dead ends because signs were missing or in odd places. Some pavilions were not on map. It would have helped to have them on the map as landmarks. Also, there was no main pathway through the park. No big landmarks to help give focus. Also, I found it quite odd that there was construction going on in the park during park hours. There were noisy cranes working in an enclosed area. My son was fascinated but I did not think that this was what I should be seeing when I paid such a large amount of money for my park admission. In comparison, Disney had a few areas that they were working on but they were discreetly hidden by decorated walls and there was no construction going on during park hours.

Worst of all, I thought that the park really had a foul odor to it. In many different areas I could smell the smell of horse manure as well as a “rotten fish” odor. This really turned me off!

Recommendations

I really could not recommend Sea World based on my experiences of this trip. I remember this being such a fun excursion when we went here last time, about 12 years ago but this trip did not live up to my expectations. There was little for the kids to do or learn and they seemed pretty bored over all. There was a lot of waiting in the hot sun for shows to begin. The admission is expensive and I did not feel that I got my money’s worth from it at all on this trip.

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Tags: , Hotels & Travel, Sea World Florida, Zoos & Aquariums