Right after lunch, I took the four older kids to the....rapids ride, I always forget what it is called! This was the only ride that had a huge wait-we were in line for about 35 minutes. Thankfully, the line seemed to move quick, and we kept ourselves busy by playing this little hand game where you load your guns and then shoot at will.....sounds violent, but is not so when you consider your guns are your fingers. We enjoyed watching the rapids every now and then, as seen in the shot below!
The actual ride got us pretty darn wet! We were all in the same tube of course, with 4 other people....one of those other people brought a cooler with her, which was really weird, and made Jordan's feet really squished. Oh well-at least they were nice. The entire ride was a blast, the kids were super excited and wanted to do it again, except the line was still really long, so we headed back to Jared. The spinning platform where you exit and enter the ride is really fun in and of itself!
At this point of the day, I stopped taking a ton of pictures because my camera battery was starting to die. We spent a while at Manta Ray Bay, as well as a few other interactive pools, including starfish and sea stars. The kids were much too scared to try and touch these guys-they are kind of intimidating looking! Have you noticed James' monkey on his back? He was the only kid I was worried about losing and if he did get lost, I don't think he'd be able to cry out loud enough for us to hear. Thus he wore his monkey with a leash the entire time we were at Seaworld. It came in handy quite a few times, and made me feel so much better in terms of safety.
Hanging out at the dolphin stadium before the show started! We were all mostly dry and didn't want to get wet, so we opted to sit higher up to enjoy the show.
I love watching the dolphins jump! Jackson kept yelling out at them--he was so much fun to hold during this particular show! He kept calling them fishies, even the pilot whale when he came out!
This is the exact same pilot whale who was here when we came to Seaworld 8 years ago-so neat!
Our last visits before we headed out for the day: seeing the dolphins more up close, and the neighboring sea lions. They were barking up a storm to each other, which was kind of neat to see in person, this close! I love how open almost all of the exhibits are-it is not hard to see, and you get really good views of the animals.
And this was the very last visit while the kids hung out watching the manta rays get fed: Karianna and I went on THE Manta-the roller coaster that is. Didn't look like that big of a deal honestly-no big drops, just a fun fast ride around a good chunk of the park. I did not take into account the speeds. Jared kept telling me how fast it went, but I never really factored that into play. Thus--I was completely unprepared for the jot that would take us from 0 to 55 in about 4 second flat. I thought I was going to throw up. I have never ever experienced anything like that. Once you got used to the speed, the ride was amazing-lots of turns, twists, sideways, all at amazing velocity that just took your breath away. I was a little worried my flip flips were going to fly off my feet-they didn't, thank goodness. I was also worried my glasses were going to go flying, so I stuffed them down the front of my shirt for the ride, lol! It was short-only a couple of minutes, at the most. But man, was it fast! At one point, the ride slowed down and I thought we were just getting ready to gather speed again-at that point, I turned to Karianna and she had her eyes squeezed shut with her face turned sideways. I asked her if she was okay, and she said, "yes...no....I don't think I can do this!" I told her to close her eyes, and we'd be done before she knew it. Little did I know-we were already done! She immediately brightened up as we were heading towards the exit, and she said she loved the whole thing-but she didn't think she could have done it much longer. She loves going fast like that, she just doesn't like big falls-which was not an issue with Manta, hence why she loved it. She said the speed at first freaked her out as well, but she would go on it again in a second. I loved sharing that moment with her!
And with that, we picked up the other kids, and headed towards the exit-everyone was excited and totally charged to come back the next day, which I think is a good sign! We left the park around 6:30--so in total, 9.5 hours for the first day--more to come tomorrow!
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