Return To Sea World

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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So Much To See In America

Thursday 1 July 1993. It was the first time we had left British soil. The first time we set foot on an aeroplane. The first time the Memsahib and myself visited the colonies...

America in fact. Orlando, Florida to be precise. The heat hit us like a slap in the face with a furnace as we got off the plane. We were bussed to Dollar Rent-a-Car where we picked up a Mitsubishi - hey! same make as my camcorder! - and then we coped with turning left across six lanes of traffic after I was pleasantly surprised to find the usual combination in the right order of accelerator, brake, ah... no third pedal as it was an automatic! Given that it was a camcorder manufacturer it might well have had a ► to go, a ►► to go faster and a ■ to stop...

Anyway, the rest of that first day we were somewhat jet-lagged. In fact Fran stayed jet lagged for about 3 days but that was more to do with giving in to it and going to sleep whilst Gill and I rented videos to watch in the room and forced ourselves awake until it got close to bedtime.

Friday 2 July 1993. We spent some time the following morning meeting the Cosmos agent and buying tickets for some of the theme parks we intended to visit. We were warned that Disney World would be crowded on Sunday which was 4th of July holiday - trust us to go to America when they are celebrating their Independance from British rule! Later we motored down to Sea World and were delighted to be given entrance plus free tickets to return another day.

The first things we noticed were the cleanliness of the place - not a piece of litter to be seen and then the baby strollers, which were in the shape of dolphins. Babies sat in the dolphin's back whilst parents pushed by holding the tail flukes. Also there were fountains everywhere, spectacular in their design.

By mid afternoon we were walking around holding a sleepy Fran up but what a great place. The shark tunnels, the aquaria, loved it! I had a camcorder with me that we'd bought specially for the holiday and I'd never do that again as I "saw" almost the entire holiday on a 1.5 inch black and white screen... All the photos have come from Gill's camera which I occasionally borrowed. It was a Canon AV1 I think. Fran had an Olympus Trip camera which was crud in the light metering department and also had a noticeable light drop-off as you got to the edge of the photo. So even where they were well exposed in the centre, the edges of the photos came out dark!

Anyway, what I'm saying is that there won't be masses of photos from this trip, though there is a 6-hour video condensed to a 3-hour short version that we never watch these days as it's just far too long and I wish I'd just taken my normal camera... [Edit on 23 Dec 2022 - ...especially as only about 15 minutes of that 6-hour video still exists due to the pure naffness of VHS tape technology!]

We marvelled at the tropical plants, we marvelled at the constant music coming from loudspeakers hidden inside moulded plastic rocks (we called them singing rocks and constant background music in public places annoys the hell out of me now...) and we marvelled at the sheer size of a beaker of Coca-Cola, enough to take a photo of one, though sadly the same is all too common here nowadays and is swelling us all to the same bloated size as our American counterparts - that was something else we marvelled at...

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