On Wednesday the 16th we flew into Orlando then hailed a Lyft to the Hilton Grand Vacations Sea World resort. We have plenty of points through my family's HGV Club ownership, and the resorts are always excellent. We got in close to 8:00pm Florida time, and we were hungry and tired, so we just grabbed food from the pool cafe and relaxed in our room until bedtime. We also purchased some water from the hotel store ($5 a bottle!) since Florida's water isn't the greatest. Oscar calls it "swamp water."
We slept that night, but I woke up before the rest of the family and decided to go to the store. We had a full kitchen in our 1 bedroom suite at the HGVclub, so I walked down to Publix, stocked up, and took an Uber back. Once we'd put all the groceries away and eaten some breakfast, we got ready and took the hotel shuttle over to Sea World. The shuttle is nice, but it's also just a 15 minute walk to the entrance, so we often walked instead of waiting for the shuttle. It did come in handy coming back from Aquatica, though, since that's a much longer walk than the kids would be willing to take.
For our tickets we purchased platinum passes out of Sea World San Antonio this past summer. Platinum passes are valid at all Sea World owned parks, and while our best perks can only be used at San Antonio, we still got 20% off on food, merchandise, and animal experiences, and we were were able to take advantage of the platinum passholder entrances and parade seating. We waited in the regular admission line this first day since we hadn't known there was a platinum passholder entrance. It's at its own little building along with the VIP tour entrance. That and the platinum entrace at Busch Gardens came in handy several times that trip.
Tyler was getting tired too and ready to go back to the hotel and chill. I did convince him to ride Infinity Falls with me before we called it a day. I really wanted to go on that big drop! There was more I wanted to do (we hadn't even been on Icebreaker yet), but we knew we could come back and finish the things we'd missed another day.
Allison wore her Elsa dress though she intended to be Rosalina from Mario Galaxy. Tyler wore his Griffindor robe to be Ron Weasley. They both looked super cute, and Tyler found another Griffindor while trick or treating. There candy corn colored umbrellas up at each trick or treat station, and we went around the candy loop seen on the map here. There were also lots of neat photo ops with fun characters and elaborate decorations.
The park was about to close one side down for Hallowscream, so we hit up Icebreaker for its last two rides. Oscar and Tyler went first. I took a brief video of them at the beginning of their ride. Allison and I went next in the very back, and Oscar took a slow motion video for us as we were finishing up.
We went to Busch Gardens on Saturday, took Sunday off the theme parks, and spent Monday back at Sea World. Oscar committed to bringing extra socks and doing the water rides with us. We did Icebreaker first and then went through the Wild Arctic since the boys hadn't been there yet. Oscar insisted we do it first since it's super cold in there, and they didn't want to be wet while they were walking through it.
Here are the kids down in the underwater viewing area. Next year Wild Arctic will have an Arctic themed flying theater.
After Wild Arctic we played in Sesame Street Land. The Cookie Drop is the weakest drop ride ever. Standard frog hoppers are better. I was hoping it would be like Dinosaur Drop at Lagoon, but I was disappointed.
We tried to ride Mako, but the line was 15 minutes, and I didn't want to make Allison wait that long for a ride she couldn't do. We'd done it on Friday with no line, and she just sweetly waited on the other side chatting with other people who couldn't or didn't want to ride the ride with the rest of their party. She's going to love Mako when she's big enough for it. Even with shoes, she was about a half inch too short.
Here are the kids posing with the great white shark teeth, which I hadn't realized they could do. We only figured it out when we saw other kids doing it.
Both kids were wearing their shark shirts that day, so I had to get pictures of them in their shark shirts with sharks behind them.
These sea lions were originally trained for the former Seymour and Clyde detective show, so there are a lot of the same familiar tricks. And there's still a cute little otter up to some mischief.
After the show we finally got Oscar on Journey to Atlantis. He'd brought extra socks in case his feet got soaked, but he didn't end up needing them.
We saw a super squished Octopus and the kids pretended to be a part of this little coral reef.
The kids and Oscar went back to the hotel while I walked back to ride Mako. I'd been sending a Marco Polo to Amy and figured I'd show her the Shark Encounter along the way. While I was there an employee pointed out shark embryos and a shark pup to me. I hadn't noticed them before.
The first ride I wanted to try was Pipeline. Allison was too short for it, so Oscar took her on Icebreaker while Tyler came with me. I loved Pipeline, but Tyler didn't. It's a standing coaster, and I liked when the airtime made my feet come off the ground. Tyler barely touched the board when we first got on, so I imagine it would be a bit uncomfortable for anyone who's less than 5 feet tall. Oscar didn't care for the full body airtime either when he rode it on a future visit, but I loved it!
After those first coasters we all went over to ride the new family coaster - Penguin Trek. It was more fun than I was expecting for a 42 inch coaster. It's got two good launches and you get to enter the penguin habitat when you're done, though this also makes the line smell like stinky fish.
While the boys were doing 54+ inch coasters, Allison and I road the flamingo paddle boats. It costs extra (though it's less expensive for passholders), and it was kind of boring. You're not able to paddle very far into the Lagoon, but I did get some nice pictures. It would also be a good place to hang out while you watched someone ride Mako. Just as Mako finishes, it curves around right next the Lagoon.
I then did Journey to Atlantis with the kids. Oscar opted out since he wasn't feeling well. Allison was still a bit tired from the previous travel day, so the two of them headed back to the resort while Tyler and I rode some coasters.
Manta was great! I knew it would be since I'd been on it with Amy and Rachel in 2009, but my 42 year old body definitely feels more side effects from it than my 27 year old body did.
We then went on Kraken and saw the sea lions in the feeding area. Kraken was good, but Mako blew it and Manta out of the water. It's now easily in my top 5. What a coaster! It's everything I love about roller coasters with none of the unpleasant side effects I put up with. I could ride it all day long!
There were Halloween decorations out, but the Spooktacular festivities are only from Friday - Sunday, so we had to come back for them another day.
We also watched the Rescue Tails show before meeting up with the boys for lunch.
We went to Busch Gardens the next day (BG will get its own post for the 3 days we spent there) then came back to Sea World for Spooktacular on Saturday. In the morning Oscar did a 5K and finished 6th place total, 2nd in his age group at 21 minutes 33 seconds. It was his best by a long shot thanks to the decrease in elevation. He likes finding a race where ever we go on vacation.
The kids and I relaxed Saturday morning after a big day at Busch Gardens the previous day. We wanted to go to Sea World since they were doing their trick or treating and other Spooktacular activities, but that didn't start until noon, so we waited until almost noon to get there.
We didn't bother going on any rides since all of the rides had posted wait times of around 75 minutes. I heard that they'd given away a bunch of free guest passes to passholders that needed to be used by that weekend, hence all the locals coming out for it. We focused on the Spooktakular stuff since we knew we could come back on a less crowded day for the rides and other attractions.
Allison decorated some cookies and was just finishing when Oscar and Tyler met up with us. As we were walking out of the cookie area we were delightfully surprised by Cookie Monster. He was coming to pose for photos, but he let us have our own private meet and greet and hugs. Once he went on stage for photos, a huge line formed to meet him. We got super lucky!
The good news is we got to sit for the parade in a shaded area thanks to the platinum passholder seating section. The bad news is no one was monitoring it, so there were probably plenty of non platinum passholders using it, and adults were standing behind their strollers making it difficult for those of us sitting on the benches to see. Fortunately no one was standing directly in front of us, so we could see the parade okay, but our pictures and video aren't as good thanks to the standing adults. I'm all for pushing a stroller up to the front, but then sit yourself down on the ground next to it like most of the other adults were doing. If you stand in front of a seated area, you're forcing everyone behind you to stand too and defeating the point of even having a seated area.
I came back to the park on my own around 6:45pm to see if I could get in some night coasters. I couldn't do Mako, Pipeline, or Icebreaker since those are on the Hallowscream side of the park, but I did get to go on Manta, Kraken, and Penguin Trek. Manta and Kraken are both significantly better at night. Penguin Trek was only slightly better.
After finishing the loop, Allison and I went to see the sharks to get out of the sun for a bit. It was always so fun to see the big hammerhead going over your head.
Tyler and Oscar had left the hotel after us, so we told them we'd meet up at Sesame Street Land once Tyler was done trick or treating.
After the parade Allison got to meet a mermaid and show her the mermaid shirt she was wearing, then we went back to the resort around 3:00pm. With the park that crowded, there was no point in staying any longer.
When I first arrived I watched the dolphin show since all the ride lines said around 40 - 75 minute waits, and I hoped they'd be better after the show. They were still showing the same times after the show, but I decided to just deal with it, and luckily they were totally off. Kraken said it had a 60 minute wait, but I walked right up to the front row and joined a group of 3. Manta said 70 minute wait, but after Kraken I figured it couldn't be that long. This one took me about 30 minutes, but once I was through the queue I was able to join a group of 3 in the front row (they could really use a single rider line for busier days). Penguin Trek said 65 minutes, but it took me 20 at most.
The next day we took a day off theme parks and put together a little church at home. We read our scriptures, watched Come Follow Me videos, and had the kids sing through their YouTube playlist for their upcoming primary program. We also listened to the ownership update and decided to upgrade to HGV Max so we can use our points at more places in the future. The resort they took us too had these minions on a bench just outside of it. Unfortunately they didn't have any sort of child care or even an activity center for the kids, so the kids just used their clipboards while we were listening to the presentation. Allison used a model of the hotel outside the window and drew her own dream resort.
On Monday we went to Busch Gardens then came back to Sea World on Tuesday. Allison and I wore swimsuits under our other clothes since we wanted to go to Aquatica too. We mainly focused on water rides, but since Icebreaker and the arctic area were on the way to Infinity Falls, we did those too. It's easy to miss the Wild Arctic since it looks like you're just walking into a shop when you go in the building.
And we enjoyed seeing the belugas and penguins swimming around.
Oscar and Tyler had joined us by then, though they didn't want to go to the water park. We all watched the Orca show and rode Infinity Falls with Tyler before going our separate way. Oscar opted out of Infinity Falls since he didn't want to get his shoes wet.
Allison and I could rode Journey to Atlantis then hailed an Uber for Aquatica. Tyler used his souvenir money to purchase an interactive Oscar the Grouch bubble wand. It's both a bubble wand, and it has a sensor to interact with different areas of Sesame Street Land. We liked the garbage can lid on top of Oscar's head.
Allison and I had fun at Aquatica on Tuesday, then all of us came to Aquatica together on Thursday. We went after 2:00pm both days, meaning we only had about 2-3 hours each day, but we also didn't have many lines or crowds. I liked every slide I went on, and Omaka Rocka was a unique slide I've never done anywhere else. It was fun to ride on it with Oscar. Tassie's Twister was wonderful and now I wonder why more bowl slides don't have awesome projections. Ray Rush was so fun especially going backwards. We enjoyed seeing the Commerson's dolphins, though we could never view them properly on the Reef Plunge slide. At least we could easily go up to the aquarium afterwards. I liked how Tamariki Twirl is a kid version of the big slides (Allison was just short enough to ride it and I was allowed to be her companion on it), and she loved the squishy things you step on in the play area that makes the water shoot out. I never want to do another "lazy" river again after the rush of Roa's Rapids. There were life jackets, which Oscar used so he could just float, but the kids and I preferred to swim in the rapids.
My only real complaint is that the wave cycle is too short at the wave pool with twice as long waves off compared to waves on. I've found this to be true at other Sea World wave pools and wonder why they're all so stingy on waves (Aquatica California before it became Sesame Place, Aquatica San Antonio, Aquatica Orlando, and Adventure Island Tampa). I've been to several wave pools where it's the opposite. At Valley Fair amusement park and Silverwood, the waves are 10 minutes on and 5 minutes off.
We went back to Sea World on Friday but didn't arrive until around 2pm. We were nearing the end of our trip and didn't feel the need to stay all day. 2pm was the perfect time to do the Trick or Treating with barely any lines. The kids went through the candy walk 3 times! I went over to Pipeline while Oscar took them trick or treating, then we all met up at the dolphin show. It took me awhile do get through Pipeline since someone threw up on one coaster and then a lady passed out from waiting in the heat on the 2nd coaster while they cleaned and sanitized the 1st. Fortunately they were able to revive her and get her escorted off safely, but then they had to do safety runs on both coasters before they could let us ride.
Since it was on the way and they hadn't been there yet, Oscar and the kids explored the aquariums in the Manatee Rehabilitation area.
The Dolphin Show was wonderful as usual, and the dolphins came up to say goodbye at the end. I got some cute pictures of Allison with her dolphin shirt on and the dolphins in the background. We were in the splash zone and barely got splashed. Other people got completely soaked.
The kids went Back through the Halloween tour, and I went with them until we split off so I could see the manatees and sea turtles. I later met up with them at Sesame Street Land.
I liked watching this Manatee living its best life twisting around in the water.
On my way to Sesame Street Land I saw the dolphin lagoon then went over to meet this fish lady. She said "you have all my cousins on your shirt!"
The kids spent a good while playing in the interactive area. There are several activities that don't require an interactive bubble wand, and others that do. Allison was able to find enough fun without one while Tyler wanted to do everything with his wand.
Ms Walrus was fairly active. They were just finishing up her feeding when we arrived.
The other side of the park was still open, so Allison and I rode Penguin Trek while the boys rode Kraken.
We finally got Oscar on Infinity Falls! He made the kids laugh saying "I'm glad we're going on this nice gentle ride" then having big reactions with every drop or splash.
Instead we went through the Shark Encounter.
We then watched the "Flippers Facts and Fun" Sea Lion show. It was the same show as Sea World San Antonio, though they had a funny mime doing tricks before it started.
The finale is great, and in the Orlando show, they bring a walrus in close to the end. They invited a boy to feed him, then had the walrus clap in the water.
Here are the kids inside the journey to Atlantis aquarium
And to finish their day we took them to see the Manta aquarium.
There's also an area where you can see the mantas swimming above you. From the underside this ray looks like it's smiling happily.
Here's me after riding front row on Mako. It's such a great ride! One of these days I'll have to ride it at night!
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