California Trip 2021: Universal Studios and Sea World

On Wednesday we made it to Universal Studios in the morning right on time for opening. We went directly to the Simpson's ride since I'd checked out the Universal app the previous two days and saw it was always the ride that seemed to get the longest lines. Even getting there 5 minutes before it opened, it still took about 30 minutes to get on and through the ride. 

After the Simpsons we went on the Studio Tour, which we'd skipped last time since it was a busy holiday and we had limited time. It was nice to relax and enjoy the tour on a much less crowded day this visit. 

The special effects were fun with simulated flooding, earthquakes, and a shark attack. The King Kong and Fast and Furious experiences were basically their own rides. It's cool they're on the tour, but it'd be nice to be able to ride them without needing to do the entire tour again. At least you can go on the King Kong ride at Islands of Adventures in Florida. 

After the tour we walked over to the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride, which Allison is about an inch too short for. She waited with us to do parent swap since the line gives you a tour of the castle, moves quickly, and only took about 13 minutes total. We followed that up with the Flight of the Hippogriff coaster then walked over to Minion land.

The Secret Life of Pets ride had opened since our last visit. It was very impressive visually, like stepping right into the movie.

We then went to the Animal Actors show and the Water World show. Water World was more impressive at night with the fireworks and fire (we'd seen it at 7pm in February on our last visit), but it's still good during the day. They didn't have a night time show for us that day since it was August and the park closed at 6:00pm.

From there we walked down to the Kung Fu Panda 4D theater. The kids posed with a troll and I laughed at the actors up in the buildings talking about us with heavy New York accents.

We ate some lunch at the Minion Cafe then rode Minion Mayhem and the Super Silly Fun Land ride. Minion Mayhem had about a 40 minute wait, which was the longest wait we had all day. Simpsons got to 60+ minutes later in the day so I'm glad we went there first.

We grabbed a giant donut from Lard Lad's before heading down to the lower lot. The kids played in the dinosaur play area before we rode the Jurassic World ride. We'd saved that ride for the end since it'd been cloudy and cold when we first arrived, but the forecast said the sun would come out later. 

After Jurassic World we swapped doing the Mummy Ride with Tyler then just squeezed in Transformers before the park closed. 

From Universal we drove a couple hours drive down to the HGVclub Marbrisa hotel. The kids played at the Imagination Station making their own buttons the next morning. On Thursday I let the kids take things at their own pace since we had 3 full days to see Sea World and didn't need to rush things. When annual passes are only around $100, it's the way to go. It's so much more relaxing to go multiple days, hit up the park whenever we feel like it, and leave when we're getting tired rather than getting there right at opening and cramming in as much as we can until closing. 

Sea World did have their Bay of Play open, but their main big climbing area was still closed. The kids were able to do the bounce pads, play in the splash pad, and Allison got a picture with Big Bird. Oscar took Tyler over to ride Manta right next to the flamingos. Here's Tyler standing on one leg like the flamingos. He and Allison were even wearing shirts with colors that matched the flamingos, which was a complete coincidence. 

We focused on rides that day since it was our only weekday at the park and we knew the next days (Friday and Saturday) would be more crowded. After doing the Bay of Play rides we went over to Journey to Atlantis.

Near Journey to Atlantis are a few more kids' rides. Here they are on Aqua Scout, Tentacle Twirl (which takes way too long to load), and Sea Dragon Drop. Allison found a new friend. 

Here they are on the Octorock with Allison's new friend between them. Here was their conversation while they waited for it to get started.

New Friend: I'm Indian

Allison: I'm not Indian!

Tyler: She's not saying you're Indian. She's saying she's Indian. We're...um...uh...American.

Me: She's American too. She lives here in the United States.

Kids looking around confused: Then what are we?

The ride then started and they'd forgotten about it when it was over. 

We then went over to the arctic area to see the penguins. We'd always been here in February, so I had no idea how they change it up in the summer months. They intentionally keep the Penguin area super dark because August in Antarctica is dark most of the day.

There were some very vocal Sea Lions at Sea Lion point.

To finish up the day I took the kids on Riptide Rescue. This was new to Allison since it's 46+ inch, and she wasn't tall enough for it in February 2020. There was no line when our ride ended, so the operator let us ride twice. Allison and I were done after that but Tyler wanted to keep riding it until closing and ended up doing it 5 or 6 times. 

While he was on that I took Allison over to see the sharks and the sea turtles. 

The next day I wanted to try going to Aquatica because it's being turned into Sesame Place next year. I wanted to see what it was like before they changed it. Little did I know until talking to a lifeguard that all they're doing is adding rides and a Sesame Street theme to it. They're not taking away anything that's already there. If I'd realized that I probably would have opted out of it. The weather said the sun was going to come out around 11:00, but unfortunately, it never did. I had also read that Aquatica had big fish tanks where you could watch the fish and marine animals while you swam and went down slides. I guess that's only at the Texas and Florida locations. If they did have any aquatic animals, we totally missed them. I also thought it'd be a good water park for Allison because so many slides only had 42 inch height requirements, but unfortunately they only had single tubes for slides I'd seen online using double tubes. Allison struggled to hold and sit on her own tube. It's much easier to put her on a double tube with her arms over your legs. The big family slide I knew she would love was closed. It was overall a big disappointment. We left early. We would have been better off just swimming at the hotel pool and saving $130. 

After that we stopped for lunch at Chili's then went to Sea World. This time we focused on shows. Even on busy days you can always find seating at the shows. It just might be further back, more off to the side, and/or in the splash zone.

I then took Tyler over to the Manta aquarium and Manta coaster.

Then we watched Dolphin Days. It's so neat to watch 3-8 dolphins doing tricks together. 

We then walked around enjoying the electric ocean ambiance and seeing the Maccaws.

The sea turtles came right up next to the glass.

The Orca show is always impressive.

There was also a new Cirque de Soleil type stunt show that was unique to weekends in the summer. It was great! With all the lights and bright colors it would have been even better after dark. 

Here are Oscar and the kids enjoying the color changing illuminated jellyfish. I'm really glad we got to see all the Electric Ocean features. It made it feel like seeing Christmas lights.

Here's Oscar being a Rocking Eel while the kids waited in line to ride Oscar's Rocking Eel.

We then went over to wild Arctic again. The Beluga whales looked super cool at night. There were 3 of them in the tank this time. I'd never seen more than one. I think they take two of them out for the interactive Beluga encounter exhibits during the day. 

The walrus came right up next to the glass to see the kids.

The kids saw a bit of the family friendly dance party, then they and Oscar decided to go back to the car for awhile to play their tablets. I decided to enjoy the park by night and wander around. First I saw some sleeping Orcas.

I walked around talking to the employees working the different exhibits. I learned from one of them that the Tidal Twister roller coaster (a small single rail coaster that went around in a sideways figure 8) kept having constant malfunctions since it first opened. It's been closed more days than it was ever opened, and it was basically just a huge loss for the company. They plan on replacing it soon and have instructed the employees to direct people away from the area as much as possible. She also explained to me that San Diego county has tight restrictions on how tall rides can be, hence why they're limited in what they can build and why the coasters in Orlando are way bigger and more intense than anything in San Diego. 

The family later came back in for the fireworks. It was a good show but it was pretty short, maybe 4 minutes long. I heard from the employees that there are easily accessible areas where the locals often go to watch the show outside the park. I'll have to keep that in mind for next time. I'd been hoping for a bigger show in the amphitheater over the bay. It makes me wonder why they even have that big amphitheater if they're not using it in summer when they're at their busiest.

The next morning we took the kids to the Reptile Encounter at the Imagination Station then let them play for a good long time before going back to Sea World. 

Sea World was insanely crowded on Saturday. We arrived around noon, 3 hours after they opened, and there was still a huge line just to park and go through security. Oscar realized he'd left his hat in the car once we made it in the line, so he ran back to grab it while I took the kids in to ride Shipwreck Rapids. Fortunately the line, which had been a 60 minute wait the previous days, was only a few minutes long. It'd been overcast that morning and the sun was just coming out when we arrived, otherwise I'm sure the line would have been huge. 

After Shipwreck rapids the kids pet crabs and sharks in the touch exhibits.

And to our great delight they had the cleaner fish available too. This exhibit had been closed the previous two days. We spent lots of time on our knees bent over. I wish I could put on a swimsuit and just hop into a pool with them.

We tried doing Journey to Atlantis, but the line was at least an hour, so we walked back over to the Wild Arctic. Ferdinand, the remaining Beluga, bobbed up and down. I think he was trying to find his buddies.

Allison found her twin! They were both blonde, wearing purple glasses, were about the same height, and had their hair pulled back. 

The seal was living his best life playing with a red ball.

We took the kids over to the Turtle Bay exhibit where they spent quite some time playing a video game swimming turtles with turtle remotes and making sure they got the right food for their species and stayed away from dangers. There was nowhere to sit down there, so I walked over to the "Let's Be Friends" show at the nearby Mission Bay theater. I invited the kids to join me, but they were too into their game. I was happy to have a place to sit down and air conditioning.

 

Afterwards Oscar took them to see the sharks and we met up at the end of that. We decided it was too crowded to stay for anything else, so we left the park, grabbed some lunch, and went back to the hotel. I didn't take any pictures, but the kids and I had a fun time swimming and sitting in the hot tub. We met another family with kids of similar ages, so they had some friends to play with. 

The next day we started our long drive home, stopping off for church. Interestingly enough the ward that was most convenient to go to was in Santa Clarita super close to 6 Flags. It was kind of sad to pass by and not go into the park, but it was also nice to go to church, and we still had 18 hours of driving ahead of us when it was over. 

We stayed in northern California the first night then finished the rest of the drive the next day. We got some great views of Mt Shasta, which was totally devoid of snow. It's typical for it to have less snow in September/October, but no snow in August is pretty rare and shows how intense California's drought was this past year.