Sea World : Too Plastic Fantastic

Consulting the schedules, Mark really wanted to check out Seaworld as a breakup during the madness that was Comic Con. so we figured the easiest and smoothest time to do this was intro day morning, when people were just getting started, and not much was happening ..... or so we thought. I think this was the day that Hugh Jackman turned up and gave a sneak preview of the new Wolverine film and the announcement of Tron 2 with footage was made.

Anyway trekking out there was a breeze, caught a cabbie, the best of my life, and proceeded to discuss various californian themes with him. he was a blast. arriving at the gates the first thing that hits you is the price, $60 US just to get in, per person. i felt that was steep. the second thing you notice is this is a family outing, a location where every whipper snapper comes to run amuk, and pretend they saw .... the last great bloody whale on earth.

Walking around the park itself which is quite large, i noticed theres no main large aquarium, no central focus, its more of a group of broken up theme areas, with 3 or 4 main tanks for the dolphins, seals, whales and mammals to live and..... perform for your fatty dollars. kinda sad. the rest of the park is landscaped gardens, theme park rides and attractions and plenty of areas to stock up on those sugar shakes and fun time foods.

We began in the Arctic enclosure, viewing a whale and walrus enclosure, with a sleeping polar bear and swimming salmon. the layout is superb and gives the youngens a real sense of adventure and mystique. but this was the first time i began to notice things not feeling quite right. for me, yeh it was cool to see these animals, but as you view them swimming in and around their tiny pools, in the same repetitive motions, left to right, left to right, you have to ask the question, is this all worth it?. its a question many don't see as they get caught in the park "swirl of coolness, and kiddy themes".

We then moved onto the dolphin and killer whale enclosures which seemed large, but were actually multiple tanks broken down into sections and a performing area. sure these guys had more space, but they seemed kinda more inteligent on the whole i guess, i mean when you have to perform for you daily meals ... you get kinda good at jumping and entertaining, yeh iv'e still got a bit of a bad taste in my mouth about it all, and it might be that god awful smoothie i had aswell. dont get me wrong, the sight and sounds were great, the animals performed great feats, but ... Dad, seeing these dolphins, i couldnt help but reflect back to our times in Monkey Mia and more so out in Rockingham when we could experience these animals in the wild, nothing will ever beat that, and im glad we have that opportunity.

Lastly Mark convinced me to hit this roller coaster called Atlantis which combined water and fast speed fun. this was gold and really lightened the day up as we shot through back to the Comic Con. the fun had just begun.