SeaWorld of Ohio

Fourth Stop - SeaWorld

We pushed to get to an area near SeaWorld so we could have a full day at the park. As we were driving along towards SeaWorld, we saw a campground called Jellystone Park. It was within just a few miles of SeaWorld, so we decided to camp there. It turned out to be a great place with lots of fun things to do. We stayed two nights.

Shamu in the tank. SeaWorld is a big and beautiful park, completely commercial and ready to take your credit card. It is a place where you can easily spend two days if you want to see absolutely every show, but we didn't have the ability to stay that long. The atmosphere is just too "tiring" to be considered a vacation. Here we see the gang looking at "Shamu" (not his real name, in this case there were two whales and they were both female.)

Monika, Eva and Maria feeding the Dolphins.

During several parts of the day the staff sells fish (a few for a few dollars) that you can feed to the Dolphins. You get a few coupons and some other goodies in the gift shop with a receipt from feeding the Dolphins. Eva really wanted to do this because she loves Dolphins.

	There are two or three arenas within the park where shows go on throughout the day. If you sit down front during the Shamu show, you will definitely take a bath! The whales are trained to do several tricks, including launching a trainer into the air and touching a ball high above the tank. We enjoyed the Shamu show.
	One of the things you can do which is "extra" is a behind the scenes tour. To the left is one of the Dolphin trainers showing us the feeding preparation area and a board explaining the behavior of the Dolphins. To the right is a caretaker that tends to the birds. He introduced us to a group of South African Penguins that were quite a group (they were particularly fascinated with the caretaker's shoelaces!)

We got to see the filters that keep the tanks clean. The kids have never seen big industrial equipment like this before.

SeaWorld also takes care of other animals that are injured or neglected. There were a few Parrots that needed care, and they sat on an outdoor perch. Here Eva tries to get one to talk. Their flight feathers were clipped so that they couldn't get away.

On the back section of the park was a huge building where the kids could climb cargo nets and run up and down. There were all kinds of "habitrails for humans" that kids and adults can climb in. I like these things. We could have probably spent a day on these alone! I just wish that they would make them 10% bigger for us old folks...