Sea World

A sunny day after Christmas is the perfect day to go to Sea World...and that's what a gazillion other people thought too! 

Yeah, we all rode the skytower up!  What a great way to start the day!

Then we went to a dolphin interaction area...here the dolphins are interacting with the people by spraying them (as directed by their handlers).  We were a little surprised...

...and it was enough to really upset Konrad.  See those two drops on the right side of his shirt?  Yep, that's about all the water he got.  Konrad loves to play in the water, but if he doesn't have his bathing suit on when he gets wet, it's very upsetting.

Our dolphins.

The littlest dauphin.

Then we went to the Shamu show.  There were lots of jumping killer whales...

...Natalie had a hard time watching because of the sun...

 ...and the handlers at the Shamu show REALLY encouraged the killer whales to get the crowd wet.  Thankfully, we were well beyond the splash zone, because those in the splash zone looked like they jumped in the pool with Shamu.

But at the dolphin show, Lukas asked to sit in the splash zone, because he WANTED to get wet.  Dominik said he wanted to get wet too, so Tom sat with them down below.  Here's the before picture.

And here's the after picture.  Not really...this picture was taken one second after the one above, but it may as well be the after picture, because the dolphins only splashed one section of the audience, and it wasn't the one where Lukas was sitting.

There were jumping pilot whales...

...and jumping dolphins, but no wet Happy Ones.

 So we rode the gondola...didn't get wet there.

But there is the Shipwreck Rapids ride.  Konrad only got on when we said he could cover up with coats.  That's him in the red shirt under the blue coat.

He spent most of the ride under the coat, and then just when he took the coat off, he got wet.

Lukas was ecstatic to be wet!

Natalie had fun getting wet too!  Next time, I'll bring a change of clothes for everyone.

On the way home, we stopped at Mission San Luis Rey.  We were still wet and the sun was going down, so it was a very quick visit.

The mission is undergoing seismic retrofit, reopening in January...in time for Lukas to study California History in the fourth grade.

We had a great day at Sea World and we plan to visit several more times while Jordana is here.  If we don't tell anyone we're coming, will there be fewer people there the next time?