Sea World's Aquatica

We had a dual pass between Sea World and Aquatica. We took a day and visited the water park. It was a long day and my kids had a blast. A couple of recommendations and notes, though. We had tickets that were unlimited visits for 14 days. If you have one of those, you might consider breaking the visit into two days. The later in the day, we found the smaller the lines to the more popular slides. More of the 'free' chairs were available as well. The later in the day, though, the less likely you are to get a locker. You might consider getting a cabana as well. Reserve it online so that it's there when you arrive. It looks like a lot of money, but you get covered chairs, a locker, towels, and a refrigerator filled with sodas and water. Very convenient, that.

Second, there is a restaurant in the middle front that has unlimited visits for one price. You can pay $20 for one all-you-can-eat buffet visit, or $26 for all you want all-you-can-eat visits. We went all out and it paid for itself in drinks if nothing else. The restaurant is the Banana Beach Cookout. Primarily hamburgers/hotdogs for cuisine, but our second visit they had put out nachos.

The 'big' draw slide is their Dolphin Plunge. It takes you through a dolphin display pool. The portion of the tube that goes through is clear to give you the opportunity to see the dolphins as you go by. Unfortunately, we found that you go too fast to see much of anything. The rest of the tube is dark and right after the clear section you're done. A bit of a disappointment to us, but still a fun slide.

The rest of the water park is what you'd expect from a water park. Two wave pools, misc. slides, tubing slides, kids play area, etc.

Sea World

When we go to visit my folks, we generally don't get the opportunity to see Sea World. Being a volunteer at the Aquarium, I always want to go see more fish when I travel. So we took some of our timeshare points and got tickets for the family to go.

My daughter and I took the time to feed the sea lions (beware the birds!) and the sharks (at Shark Encounter). The sea lions looked to have been fed quite a bit before we got there, so they seemed to be playing with the fish more than eating it. The birds, of course, knew this so they'd swoop to get fish asap. The sharks and rays were cool to watch eating their shrimp.

We actually were at the shark encounter right at lunch time and were lucky enough to get a 12:15 seating at the restaurant there. Reminiscent of the Living Seas restaurant at EPCOT, one wall of the restaurant was a window into their shark exhibit. We got a really cool seat where we could look directly in. My only complaint was cost of food. Average cost for an adult lunch was about $23. You do, though, get a good size serving and the food was VERY good.

We visited dolphin cove and considered feeding the dolphins, but the cost more than tripled to do so. For $17 per person, you get an 'exclusive' area to feed the dolphins and a chance to touch. We had to pass on that and just watched. One of the dolphins in the cove, though, took matters into his own fins. He decided to jump right in front of us and splash us good. I did get a shot of him doing it, though.

I had too many pictures to post directly here, so I created a scrapblog.

Aquatica

Have you guys seen this yet? A water park by Sea World. The big thing that draws my attention is the water slide (clear) that goes through a holding tank for whales/dolphins.