Sunday, October 14, 2007

SeaWorld Adventure

My mom and dad were in town last week and Jason and I were able to get away for 3 days with Alaina. It was so nice to be able to spend some time away. We went over to Orlando and stayed in a nice hotel and went shopping and ate some good food and we decided to go to SeaWorld because Jason had never been before. We had such a great time!! It was really, really hot the day we went. The temp hit 92 and the humidity was 97%. It was hot and sticky, but we still had a great time. The park wasn't very crowded, which was nice. We saw the dolphin show 2 times. It's so amazing to see how high they can jump. They had 2 animals called false killer whales in the show that looked like huge dolphins. Alaina enjoyed the show the 2nd time because it was much cooler out by then. She actually watched and laughed and cooed. We saw BELIEVE, the killer whale show, once. We found out some interesting stuff. Like dorsal fins don't fall because the whale is in captivity. It falls because they are made of cartilage and get super heavy. If you find a whale in the wild that is old enough, their dorsal fin will have flopped over as well. We also learned that all dolphins are whales. I didn't know that. And we learned that young dolphins misbehave just like young children do. During the second dolphin show they had to stop the show because the two false whales were misbehaving and they couldn't move them into the side tank like they were supposed to. It took about 10 minutes before they got them to behave and finish their portion of the show. Kinda funny. We got to the Shamu show an hour early so we could get a good seat. We ended up right in the center at the very top of the soak zone. We were told that the top middle of the soak zone might get sprinkled, but that it would be safe to sit there with Alaina. LIARS!!! When it was time for Shamu to come out they had everyone in the audience start chanting "SHAMU! SHAMU! SHAMU!" You couldn't see him, but you did see a large wave start from left to right across the pool. We figured something was coming when the Seaworld cameraman who was just to our left grabbed a huge tarp looking thing and flung it over his camera as Shamu was swimming towards us. I had the my camera up and ready to take a picture and quickly pulled it down and turned to protect it. Jason also turned quickly and covered Alaina. Jason was splashed a little, I was engulfed by the wave Shamu sent into the audience. There is a pic in the montage of the massive wave that Shamu sent over the wall each time he splashed. I had to ring my clothes out at the end of the show. Note to self: Don't sit where it says SOAK ZONE unless you really want to be soaked. It was pretty cooling though considering the temperature was so high and the water that drenched me was a refreshing 50 degrees!! We also got to feed the dolphins at the dolphin encounter. That was pretty cool!! I actually picked up the dead fish, tossed it into the dolphins mouth, and reached out and touched the dolphin as it swam past. Those of you who know me well will appreciate the courage this took for me to do. The first time I was visibly shaking, but after a couple times it was actually pretty fun. We ended up with lots of pics of Jason feeding/touching the dolphins, however it became aware to me that my husband was not so good at the picture taking and we ended up with only a couple of photos of me....all with obscured views!! All in all it was loads of fun. Enojy the montage below!!

Just FYI....Evan goes in for his surgery tomorrow morning! Please pray for him!

1 comments:

The Cochran Family said...

Oh I cant wait to go to Sea World when we get to Texas. Was it expensive? Prayers for Evan!