Day 1 of Seaworld: Penguins, Sharks, and Atlantis

We saw the different varieties of penguins and puffins next since they are super close to the whales/polar bears.  I always like seeing these guys-they look so surreal to me, and then they are so fluid in the water.  The kids didn't love the fishy smell, but they liked watching the antics of the penguins! 

Next up-Atlantis!  I was so excited for the older kids to ride this, and none of them appeared at all nervous until they saw the drop!!!!  Nonetheless, they were all game, so we started our rounds of taking certain kids on in turn.  We didn't do the family line honestly-we could have, but the kids staying off the ride wanted to watch the others splash down, and the wait was only 5 minutes, so we went with it.

Me, JD, Jordan, Karianna, and Sara coming around the bend after the big drop!  We had the car all to ourselves!  JD and Jordan sat in front of me, Sara sat next to me (I had my arms around her the whole time), and Karianna braved the back by herself.  Unfortunately, Karianna banged her head on the side of the boat and was crying a bit in the pictures below-she did a GREAT job, though, overcoming that initial hardship and really enjoying the rest of the ride.  I was really proud of her.

Me turning around to console Karianna, poor girl.  I kept yelling to the boys, are you all right?  Are you okay?  They were just fine. ;)

Jared took Karianna and Sara up for the second go round-the boys said they were done with rollar coasters, which surprised me because they both said they loved it!  JD would swear, from that point on, that he is "not a roller coaster guy".

Instead, they both insisted on getting soaked with each big wave that came down!

See Jared waving?

Nearly at the bottom of the big fall! Karianna is behind Jared and Sara is on his side.

Sara had a bit of a hard time with this ride-she told Jared her stomach was feeling funny after the big fall, and Jared was a little worried she was going to throw up.  Thankfully, that didn't happen.  She would decide, at that point, that she was done with roller coasters.  I was still super proud of her, at 5, to be brave enough to go on Atlantis twice!

Checking out the mini aquairiums while we waited at Atlantis.

After we were done riding Atlantis, we zipped over to the shark encounter-so awesome!  The boys know a lot about sharks and spent quite a bit of time trying to ID the many types of sharks in the pools.  Jackson kept saying, "Oh no!" and just staring wide eyes at the sharks swimming around.

Climbing the shark tooth wall!

I wanted a better picture than this, but oh well!  Entering the long-awaited shark tunnel!

Another leg of day 1 at Seaworld done-and all before lunch!  At this point, the park started to get busier, and our beautiful weather-overcast, cool, windy-started to warm up just a bit.  Nonetheless, the kids were having an absolute blast!

Day 1 of Seaworld: Cirque, Killer Whales, and a Lunch Break

We decided to hit up a few shows before we stopped for lunch, which ended up being a good idea since the shows only happen so often!  We grabbed a couple of bags of popcorn to share and went to Cirque De La Mar (I spelled that wrong).  I love this show.  Karianna has extremely fond memories of this show, and the other kids were blown away by the set.  The two clown guys do a great pre-show that really gets the crowd revved up-we had fun cheering on our audience representative, who eventually won his place in on that trampoline right there! 

Jackson LOVED the show-all the shows really.  He was riveted the entire time. I did not expect it to be that easy with him!

We broke out the fans at this point-everyone had one, and they made sitting in the stadium a billion times easier.  I had brought a little spray bottle, and that helped as well.

One of my favorite parts about this show was seeing the joy on JD's face.  he is at that stage where he is kind of apathetic about stuff.  But he was laughing his head off at the clowns and I LOVED seeing his eyes light up-its like he reverted back to being a little kid who thrilled at the littlest things!  Oh, I love my kids!

Crazy, crazy ribbon work!

Our personal favorite-this couple did things on the swing that I had no idea were possible-the sheer strength and flexibility was just astounding

After Cirque was over, we jumped over to Shamu Stadium for the killer whale show.  Once again, the fans were super helpful, and we purposefully sat in the soak zone to cool off a bit.  I don't think the kids truly understood what the soak zone entailed....

LOVE this show!  I love these big huge animals and the things they can do with the trainers!

See the baby orca under the mom?  So cute!

This picture makes it look like the whale is just laying on the water!

So, at some point-we got soaked.  Literally.  We sat in the perfect spot-it was as if the whale was aiming for us!  James did not like it-he hid under the bench at some point and refused to come out-which was fine with me, it was kind of cute!

Jackson was shocked by the water-you can't tell very well, but he was soaked.

JD and Jordan escaped the worst of it honestly-they jumped up 2 rows behind us, and the rest of us took the brunt of the water!

We decided that would be a good time to finally break for lunch-cool off, dry off, and just rest our feet for a few minutes.  We went to the Shipwrecked Cafe, which is where we have eaten before.  The line looked ridiculously long, but only took us about 20 minutes to get through, and we found a great table, out of the way, and somewhat quiet.  Jackson fell asleep in his stroller as we were paying for our food, and slept a measly 8-10 minutes until we got to our table.  For the record-that is literally the only nap he took all day until about 9:30 pm when he fell asleep in the car on the way home.  Crazy, especially considering how well-behaved he was all day!

We ate chicken strips, watermelon, salad, pudding parfaits, and fries.  Jared got ribs and a turkey leg, and said it was pretty good!

waking up to eat grapes from JD's lunchbox-we packed his lunch separately so we could ensure it was gluten free.  The park was great about that.

We didn't rest long honestly-well, Jared and the little boys did while I took off with the other kids to ride the rapids.  After we left, apparently James needed to go to the bathroom and got away from Jared.  Jared eventually tracked him down to the bathrooms, but James went into the ladies bathroom, and it took Jared a long time to figure out how to get him out! Kind of a funny situation, although it scared jared!