Jordan Family Adventure: Sea World

Friday was Sea World day - our first trip in nearly a year. As always we got there at opening and headed straight to feed the dolphins. To our disappointment, there is no longer an opportunity to feed the dolphins. You can stand on the side and watch them swim. But considering you don't have food, they just don't swim over and let you pet them anymore. They do have a dolphin touch program. You meet with a keeper and they tell you about dolphins and you are guaranteed to touch a dolphin. It lasts between 5-8 minutes and costs $12 per person. Yep, $48 for 5 minutes. We passed on that.

The girls were excited to meet Shamu! Maddie was a little hesitant at first, but Allie ran right over for hugs. So Maddie decided to join the fun!

Another positive was the new pet show. It is AMAZING! Dogs, cats, birds, ducks, pigs, a mouse all trained. We ended up seeing it 3 times - mostly because it was indoor - I will explain soon.

Here is one favorite "trick". The dog slips out of his leash while the owner isn't looking and gets the food off the picnic blanket. This goes on several times. When the man looks at the dog - the dog also turns his head to look in the same direction as the man's look - so not looking at man. Super cute! And all these animals are rescue animals that they have trained and loved on!

One of our other favorite shows involves sea lions and this walrus that does sit ups because he is overweight!

We rode several rides too.

The girls really wanted to ride the Shamu roller coaster. They have a couple of times. Even after they told themselves they would be really brave, they still both cried the whole time! Thankfully it is short.

This pesky squirrel joined us for lunch. Even jumped up on the bench next to us! Crazy - I guess he is used to folks feeding him. Not us, we were hungry.

The squirrel finally took refuge here after Kevin chased him away for the 47th time. He looks pretty comfortable.

We also saw Sea Lions - the cute babies too.

Spent some time at the sharks and aquarium.

Check out this clam - yep that huge purple thing is an animal.

The girls did check out the sting rays and sharks, but spent most of the time dancing.

Here is Allie just twirling about...

We actually spent long than normal in the shark aquarium area. There was a shelter in place because of thunderstorms and heavy downpours occurring. We attempted Azul our favorite show twice on Friday, but both times after waiting, it was cancelled since there was lightening within 5 miles. Thus the reason for returning to the Pet Show so many times. The rain really cooled things off as well, so even though our plans were to spend Saturday morning floating along the lazy river, the water and the air, with 18 mile an hour wind,s was much too cool for that. So we actually returned to Sea World, (thankfully we purchases annual passes - they had a deal if you bought 2014, you got the rest of 2013 free. Basically it was $15 more a person for a 15 month pass. We knew we would return for at least a day.) So we went to the Pet show for a third time and got to see Azul show.

Here are a few pictures from our hotel. We walked the grounds and just hung out.