Previously: But we luckily got to hop on our scheduled shuttle and went back home to the hotel. Before going straight back to the hotel, we stopped by at McD (it became like our daily ritual) to have ourselves meal for breakfast.
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- DAY 3: DECEMBER 20, 2011 -
Okay, fourth day! It's time to get off a little bit from our Disney frenzy and move to aquatic life. Seaworld Orlando visit is TODAY!!! Although I've been to aquariums before, like Seaworld in Indonesia, Underwater World in Sentosa Island, Singapore, Downtown Aquarium at Denver, and Monterey Bay Aquarium, I have never been to an official Seaworld theme park, which obviously provided wider range of aquatic exhibits. So you wouldn't imagine how exhilarated I was that day.
By the way, the Seaworld visit that day was a bit sudden, as we actually planned to go there after we went to Disney's Animal Kingdom. But due to some specific reasons, there had been a change in plan that all of us had to book and print out the ticket a night before the visit...pronto.
The day after a tiring one spent at Epcot, we woke up quite early, around 5.30 am. We got dressed and munched on our McD meal for our breakfast we bought the night before. At around 7.20 am, we rushed to catch our shuttle to Seaworld. That was also our earliest departure to a theme park since we never took off earlier than seven before.
When we got there at around 8.05 am, apparently the park was still closed and Aymee, Ardy, Elda, and I were actually the first ones to arrive there. No kidding. We were thinking to go hanging around for 45 minutes before the park opened, but we decided to stay as we didn't want to miss the chance of being the first visitors of the day. Ardy, especially, managed to troll around with his jokes and talked a little to the security guard. Even Ardy was the one who initiated to take the first run into the park to declare himself as the first visitor of the day -_-”.
At last, the park opened. As expected, we still maintained our position to be in the first row of the line. Aymee and Ardy quickly hopped on the first ride/coaster, Manta Ray.
One of the exhibits we spotted shortly after entering the park are these not-so-pink flamingos!
1. Manta Aquarium: Seeing bunch of stingrays in a tank from up close was just fascinating. I usually see them in an aquarium with assorted species, but this tank was specially designed to be inhabited by stingrays of all sizes and types.
2. Jewel of the Seas: While still waiting for Aymee and Ardy, Elda and I walked a bit far away from the ride to Jewel of the Seas, an aquarium that exhibited exotic and unique aquatic lifeforms such as jellyfish. The interior of the aquarium captivated me the most, since it was designed likely Atlantis (complete with the worn out Greek pillars and statues). By the way, this exhibit was located near a plunge-ride called Journey to Atlantis, so that might also explain the reason behind the interior design.
Then after Aymee and Ardy finished their rides, we continued on to seeing other exhibits.
3. Penguin Encounter: I've never seen penguins with my own eyes, so this experience was just truly unforgettable. I also never knew they would swim really fast, and by the way, the way they walk was utterly cute!
4. Shark Encounter: The aquarium specially made for sharks was somehow located deep underground and the atmosphere brought me chills. Through a 60ft long shark tunnel, we were given glimpses of the famous and widely-feared predator of the waters, and not just sharks, but other venomous fish and stingrays.
Now that we already spent enough time to take a look at those gorgeous aquatic animals, we thought of seeing a live animal show. We incidentally bumped into a nearby arena which showed dolphin's performances.
Blue Horizons
When we got to this place, at around 10 am, the show had started. It was overall amusing. I had never seen dolphins for so long. Seeing them leap, jump high in the air, flapping their fins, make that high-pitched squeaky sounds, and other exciting tricks they could do totally made me feel at ease. These animals truly deserved the term of “the most intelligent species” as they apparently possessed brains bigger than those of primates. In addition, I always adored the fact that their streamline bodies allowed them to cut through the water at such a high speed.
Take a look of what these cute yet clever mammals could do from these pictures. I'm glad I took quite good loads of them :) They're so mesmerizing when they jumped up in the end, cos you can clearly see their perfect streamline, rubber body.
5. Dolphin Encounter: adjacent to the show arena was an aquarium that conserves dolphins. It's really interesting to observe the smartest mammals ever swam in the oceans (same level as orcas) from up close. You can see their witty and somehow unique behavior as seen from underwater.
"I'm sexy and I know it"
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After the show at 11.10 am, we had brunch at the Voyager's House, a restaurant located in a relatively quiet part of Seaworld. But we certainly had a fulfilling lunch with chicken ribs and ice cream for dessert all in a combo meal, yum! Later on, we went on to see Clyde and Seamore show, a show involving sea lions, sea otters, and walrus.
Clyde and Seamore Take Pirate's Island
How exciting it was to see mammals of similar looks and characteristics all in one show. The show turned out to be hilarious as it was orchestrated in a comical story. So Clyde and Seamore are two clever sea lions which each aided the female protagonist and an evil pirate (both are their trainers of course). I forgot who's who, whether it was Clyde as the sidekick of the female character or Seamore. Basically the female character and the evil pirate were involved in a hunt for a treasure.
The animals acted more as actors rather than animals that were told to do things like what happened in common live animal shows. It was like the animals had a script to “read” prior to the show and it was just amazing because of how lively the interaction went between the trainers – posing as actors – and the sea lions themselves. At any case, let's give all the actors a big round of applause!
6. Pacific Point Reserve: After the fulfilling and satisfying show, the exit path somehow led to an outdoor cage which were occupied by a LOT OF sea lions. were free to roam around and getting closer to the edge of the cage, observing us visitors from up close. In return, I got to immortalize the moment through this short clip featuring a sea lion making “calls”
Right on, when the show was over, four of us went to Jewel of the Seas, where we were supposed to meet Ardy's friends. For the rest of the day, we would be hanging out with them, so please welcome Melissa, Emelly, Wendelyn, and Nia to our tour! They hailed all the way from Bloomington, Indiana to Orlando and they were super nice! We got along well quickly.
Then after a short introduction, the Indiana girls, Aymee, and Ardy were off to go on another coaster, Kraken, which Elda and I weren't able to join (screw my coaster trauma). Kraken seemed to be really fun but it had huge drops and plunges and countless loops. By the way, it was also actually the largest coaster in the park.
While waiting, Elda and I again went to visit the same old nearby exhibit, Jewel of the Seas.
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Around an hour or so, the group was back from their adrenaline-rushing ride. Since Melissa, Emelly, Wendelyn, and Nia just arrived in Seaworld that afternoon, Aymee, Elda, Ardy, and I accompanied them to visit exhibits that we previously had seen. For a while, we still had no idea where to head. We pretty much had covered all animal shows, except...the best one in the park that we decided to save it to conclude our day, the Shamu Show (yes, that phenomenal killer whale).
However, in the mean time, we even bumped into an Indonesian family from Alabama who were also there for vacation. We chatted for a moment because they got to spot us talking to each other in Bahasa.
7. Pearl Diving: We didn't quite see this exhibit. We just happened to pass by it and take a brief look at it. The show involved an audience's participation in which he or she had to dive all the way to the bottom of the tank to retrieve shells with pearls in it. We – in fact – took more interest in a Pearl store near the exhibit because they provided a good deal of pearl accessories. I was tempted to buy some of them but of course, pearls sounded a bit too posh for me and even more the price was sooo.... *insert text here*
8. Shamu's Happy Harbor: Melissa, Wendelyn, Nia, and Emelly and I stopped by at a children-themed arena filled with light rides near the Shamu Stadium. One of them that particularly caught our interest was a carousel. Yes, it was a normal carousel except the fact that the horses took forms of aquatic animals. Feeling embarrassed? Well, I don't think so. There's nothing wrong to reminisce childhood times at such a moment in a theme park :)
9. Fancy looking birds: The visit to a bird conservatory went short that I hardly remembered what we did there. But we did stumbled upon a photo session with a colorful macaw. The interesting thing came to being when the bird trainer spotted Melissa wearing a shirt with her university name on it. The trainer suddenly said “I graduated from your university!”, to which the Indiana girls excited responded. While taking pictures, the girls and the trainer girl yelled out “Hoosier's Pride!”, which I presumed to be the university's slogan.
After an unforgettable encounter with the trainer's (we seemed to completely forget the macaw over the fact that the trainer went to the university Melissa, Wendelyn, Emelly, and Nia go to), we moved on. We met up with Ardy and Aymee at Mango-Joes restaurant near Shamu's Happy Harbor munching on their...mango dish (because we split up earlier). Near the restaurant was apparently another attraction that tested our curiosity.
The Polar Express Experience
The Polar Express surely wasn't strange to us. It was a Christmas-themed movie popular in 2004. Seaworld uncommonly opened a ride based on the movie. Yet again, it seemed to be a dark/enclosed ride with extremely long lines. The line was divided into two: “Walk-through” and “Rides”. So it looks like you can experience the rides in two ways, but for sure, the “Rides” way sounded more enticing.
We wondered what kind of dark ride the attraction would bring us to. Were we going to get on movers/trains that would take us around dioramas and animatronics based on the movie? Or was it more like a 3D simulator type of ride? All of these questions hovered in my mind during the super long line. I started to get a little fidgety when the line took more time than we expected, especially since we needed to catch the Shamu show at 5.30 pm.
After hours sitting in line because it barely moved, we got into a small room decorated likely an interior of a train car. A small screen revealed before us and apparently, the whole room turned out to be a moving platform (simulator). The ride followed a ten-minute long scene in The Polar Express movie where the train underwent a bumpy ride (if you saw the movie, you must be familiar with the scene when the train plunged down a high drop, sliding on a thin piece of ice that began to crack, and that the train had to escape the catastrophe).
So nothing new from the ride especially because I saw the movie before. It was more like we were rewatching a short scene from the movie only added with some motion effects. The motion effects turned out to be more violent than I expected as the room tilted, shook, twisted, and turned.
10. Wild Arctic:
And finally, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the show of the day....The exit path of the ride led us through a series of cold exhibit rooms that featured arctic animals such as beluga whales and polar bear. We came to an indoor polar bear cage first with some Christmas decoration installed in it, but the bears sort of blended with their white surrounding and the crowd made us hard to stay longer to observe their presence, so we decided to move on.
Next up was a tank of the beluga whales.
http://soulofamerica.com
I had always been curious of how the look like so I was a bit hopeful I could catch a glimpse of them. I was so drawn into the interior of the tank seen through a large glass window because the tank was intricately filled with artificial Arctic abiotic elements such as underwater icebergs. Again, the vastness of the tank and the blurred water didn't enable us visitors to spot the beluga whales. They were – however – spotted to be swimming on the other end of the tank, but they didn't even bother to come close to the glass window.
One Ocean
That's the name of the latest Shamu show. OMG I've been dying to see the biggest captive mammals in action, killer whales or orcas. I have always been a fan of say, bottlenose dolphins and sealions commonly seen as stars of live animal shows, but not orcas. At least before watching the show. Orcas are probably one of the most animals especially after Free Willy came to draw audience's attention and its orca actor, Keiko, became a worldwide starlet.
Anyway, back to the show. We made it to the stadium earlier than the showtime. Elda, Aymee, Ardy, and I split up with Melissa, Wendelyn, Emelly, and Nia. 4 of us preferred to sit at the soak zone while the other girls didn't. This should have been a moment when I should take bunch of pictures, but I didn't want to risk my camera being wet :(.
After a long opening, the whales came to action! The streamline-bodied with black and white patterned cetaceans entered the stadium and greeted the audience. Once in a while, they would swim upside down and playfully splashed their huge fluke to the audience. Never underestimate their strength! The splash an orca produced could reach up feet away. I started to get soaked ever since the first splash and I was sitting on the 7th row from the tank. We were a bit freaked out whenever the orca was visibly approaching the tank because it was a sign they would splash on us audience.
The trainers also got to perform acrobatic acts. The orcas carried them around on their snouts and when the orcas took a jump, the trainers flew up in the air before plunging into the cold water.
The pictures below are actually taken from a different Shamu show (excuse my lack of pictures during the show), but hopefully they can give you the idea what a night show of Shamu looks like.
Approaching the latter part of the show, a new orca was released to the arena. It was superbly big, even bigger than the babies that previously performed (yes, even the babies were HUGE). This particular orca had a drooped dorsal fin and it was just unbelievably big. Due to its massive size, it wasn't even able to jump perfectly in arch motion like the babies did (the babies did a similar, common arch jump like those of dolphins). But this massive orca only did a partial jump. Elda, Aymee, Ardy, and I kept calling it “Mama Shamu” and we warned each other “Look out, Mama Shamu is coming!” whenever its figure was seen approaching the audience to give some splash.
Well, after my trip from Orlando, I discovered that “Mama Shamu” wasn't exactly a “mama” at all. It was a he, and his name is Tilikum. He was probably the most renowned whale among all in the Seaworld family, having weighed 12,000 lbs and fathered many baby orcas. So we prolly should refer him as “Papa Shamu”?
Even at the conclusion of the show, Tilikum took its highest leap near the area where we sat on and caused a mega splash. We were completely soaked, but satisfied and happy at the same time. It was totally worth it to be soaked because we indeed had a good reason for it: blame it on the orcas ^^.
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I still couldn't believe the show was over. It all went so fast. We quickly met up with the Indiana girls who were still completely dry. Before we parted, Elda, Aymee, Ardy, and I even intended to give them a hug, in hopes they would be wet as well, but they brushed off our trick sadly. It was nice meeting them that day and I was happy to know that they would be coming with us to Disney's Animal Kingdom the next day. Yay!
Anyway, after they left – back to the four of us – we dropped by at Shamu's store. Although it was small, the store sold all kinds of Shamu-themed merchandise. The cashier, who was all by herself there, was kind enough to talk to us and was definitely very welcoming. In the end, Aymee got herself a 20” Shamu plush from Ardy, which she quickly named Julia (what a name). I got myself a small beanie Shamu plush. Aymee spontaneously called it “cebol” which means “puny” (ahem, a bit intimidated here).
However, a month after the trip, I was tempted to get myself a similar 20” Shamu plush and ordered one online, which I named Josephine.
Puny and Josephine
After shopping at the now-quiet Shamu store, we quickly changed our wet clothes to new ones (we luckily had prepared dry clothes we brought from hotel, seeing that we were going to Seaworld. SEA = Water. Chance of being wet was 80% due to being splashed by animal or an effect of a ride).
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On the way back to the entrance, at around 07.45 pm, we took last pictures of Seaworld which was now lit up in vibrant neon colors.
Sea of Trees
http://zannaland.com
Not to mention, the dolphin nursery was still open so we decided to take a quick look what the baby dolphins were up to.
Again, why did I always take good pictures on dolphins but not on Orcas???
Bye Seaworld, bye Shamu, bye Clyde, bye Seamore, bye all the wonderful mammals and creatures I have met! See you in another time!
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We quickly caught a shuttle back to the hotel. The journey took around 45 minutes and we were forced to stand during the trip since all the seats were taken. Phiew, it was a painful ride and not to mention we were soaked from head to toe as heck. But again, it was worth it and we made it back to the hotel safe.
Before going back to our rooms, we bought ourselves a small pan of pizza at Uno express with 4 slices for dinner and breakfast. Haha, yeah, I just realized we skipped dinner. The nearby restaurants would take minimum 15 minutes of walk. Anyway, we took our meal to the hotel room and munched it while watching TV. To conclude the day, all the soaked clothes were sent to the dryer in the laundry room.
Then we went to bed, saving energy for tomorrow's adventure in Disney's Animal Kingdom.
Shamu Rocks pictures are credit to:
http://2media.nowpublic.net
http://attractionsmagazine.com
http://flickr.com
<< Part 5 • • Part 7 >>
http://2media.nowpublic.net
http://attractionsmagazine.com
http://flickr.com
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