Sea World

Peanut and I recently went on the most awesome trip to Sea World. My work has a Bat Cave that we give tours of & the past couple of years we have taken a group of Sea World employees and given them a tour. This year to say Thank You they said we could have a group of up to 25 people come to SW and have a behind the scenes tour of the animals and then spend the day at the park for FREE! My department at work (we are the ones who give the tours of the cave) consist of 7 people, plus spouses and kids comes out pretty close to 25. So a couple of Saturdays ago was our day. Tim went to the football game instead (his parents have season tix). Plus, I think we both knew that a day at SW was not really his thing. No big deal, I'd rather him do something he'd enjoy and not have to worry if he was doing okay at the park all day long. We got up early and met w/my friend Sarah & her husband and rode with them to the park. We got to pet Beluga whales, sting rays (most freaky of all), sharks and a Killer whale. It was so awesome, the animals were such hams. They seemed to be loving every minute of attention they could get. We saw dolphin and beluga moms with their babies that were only 3 months old. The behind the scenes was a little trying on all the kids, it was a lot of walking and listening and not getting to do the fun stuff (the rides!!). Once our tour was over, they released us into the park to do the rides, shows & water park. Our first stop was The Journey to Atlantis. I was so nervous taking Peanut on her first big ride, she had not done anything like it but she was so excited. We loaded up. The height didn't seem to phase her, but the instant that we started to head down the big drop ... I saw complete horror on her face and thought, oh no! I'm such a horrible mother, this is going to be awful. The horrified look went away and I was trying to determine what was next. She screamed at the top of her lungs the whole way down. Then she laughed and laughed and said "That was awesome! Let's do it again!" WHEW! I laughed so hard I was crying. What fun! She had a blast. We rode a few other rides and she screamed at every dip, drop and turn but all the while was smiling and laughing. Every ride ended with "That was awesome!" or "Let's do it again." We ate lunch, did the water park and had some snacks. We didn't catch any shows (but we did get some sneak peaks at the acrobat guys backstage & of course got to see most of the stars up close). We got to the park at 10:30am and left at 6:30pm. She wanted to do more, but had enough fun that she was okay with leaving. We definitely need to make SW a two day trip next time. There were lots of rides we didn't do, shows we could have seen and then they have a kid play area that we passed as we were leaving. What a great way to end our summer! I'll post some pics soon.