Wednesday 7 July 1993. Let's journey back to 1993 and continue the story of the one and only holiday trip to America. It's not that I wouldn't love to go back, it's just I've never found the chance since then. [Edit: we were to finally make it back in 2016]
Anyway, you may remember that we visited Sea World on our first day in Orlando and dragged a sleepy jet-lagged Fran around until she gave up and had to be wheeled about in a dolphin-shaped baby stroller. We had been given free tickets to return so this is our return to Sea World. We have a lazy morning and then drive down the road to Sea World to use our free tickets. Our first stop is a musical fountain display - fabulous fountains lit by coloured lights sway and rotate to music. For something that sounds so simple it was absolutely spellbinding.
Some of the fabulous aquaria. There were all sorts of different fish displayed with walk-through tunnels and more conventional tanks. One of the displays that really caught my attention was Terror of the Deep which, whilst it contained the shark pools and aquaria with its walk-through tunnel, also had eels and all manner of poisonous fish capable of giving you an aversion to swimming.
We watched the dolphin show, jumping out of our skins as did the rest of the audience and all performers and trainers as there was a lightning strike just behind the stands. My video at that point went a bit wobbly...
We spent some time at the dolphin touch pool where it's up to the dolphins whether they want to be touched. One did come near enough to Fran for her to touch it, she said it was a bit like stroking wet Tupperware... Having thus hurt its feelings it refused to come anywhere near us again.
We saw the daytime Shamu show on our previous visit but everyone kept telling us not to miss the night show so we went back and took the opportunity to turn up early and go down to the glass front of the pool to watch these huge wonderful animals swim past us, noting that they were sizing us up as much as we were them!
The show was spectacular - and wet for anyone sitting near the front. The two killer whales performing were able to sweep vast amounts of water over the audience by swimming on their sides and pushing the surface of the water with their flukes. There was lots of jumping, there was lots of loud music, there were trainers riding on the whales' backs or "log rolling" as the whales rolled over. All in all a whale's dream existence... or whatever... It was a very good show but I do get a slightly guilty feeling watching such animals performing. But these were (just about) pre-Free Willy days and the whales had plenty of opportunity to gobble, maim and rip apart their trainers had they so wished. They have been known to take up the option on occasion... Tastes like chicken apparently...
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