Summer Trip to SeaWorld Themed Park, Orlando FL

Planning a trip to SeaWorld? Check out photos from our trip to SeaWorld and learn a little from our experience.

Have you ever been to SeaWorld? We went two days during our summer vacation. It rained both days and both days we left earlier than we planned.

The first day, we spent most of it walking around trying to figure out what activities to do and where to find them. (Depending on what activities you want to do, one may be on one side of the park while the other way over on the other side). I think we all got a little tired from walking around. Smaller kids who are not strollers can get tired very fast. Here’s some of what we did the first time.

I guess I was expecting more sea animals displayed around the park since it is called “SeaWorld”. From what we saw, I can’t say that there were as many as we expected. But maybe there were many others we didn’t see. After all, the park is huge and we didn’t do half the activities. But we saw some dolphins, fish, whales and a few birds here and there. I think that’s about all the sea animals we saw in “SeaWorld”. There are penguins and arctic animals that we didn’t see, too. There’s also dolphin shows (that we didn’t go to) but went to a whale shows and animal shows (dogs, cats, ducks, etc) that we did.

The kids enjoyed taking photos here

Show performance with whales

Cats and dog show with other animals included such as a mouse, a skunk and some

This is the arctic side of the park. The sculptures represent where the animals in colder areas live. I believe there are penguins and some other arctic animals here. We didn’t see them since the wait time to go inside was a little longer than we wanted to.

Some random photos

And then the rain came and all the rides were turned off due to lightening in the radius. We had to wait a while for them to open back up. My husband and kids waited in line to go White Water Rafting for over an hour only to be disappointed when they couldn’t go. Every time they close to the front of the line, the ride got closed down due to lightening or technical difficulties. They were so disappointed when they left. The people working at that activity gave them a fast past for when the rides opened up again. But because we were already tired and it was getting to be evening, we decided to just eat dinner, get the kids some SeaWorld trinkets then head back to the hotel instead of waiting around.

In some ways, we felt kind of cheated out of the park. We felt like we didn’t do anything much which was a bit frustrating since the tickets to this themed park is rather pricey.  But we didn’t feel like waiting around since it was getting dark anyways. Thankfully, we go a refund on our tickets to use if we were to go back next time.

Well, on Friday, after we checked out at the hotel to head back on the road to home, we decided to stop for breakfast. After breakfast, my husband jokingly asked, “Alright, who wants to go to SeaWorld?” To his surprise all the kids said, “Meeeeeee”. They were serious. I think he was even more surprised when I agreed. I knew we’d gone the day before and didn’t do much because of long walks, rain, and tiredness. I felt better trying again.

Me and this little one hung out most times since we both walked slowly while the others went ahead. She especially just couldn’t keep up. I ended up carrying her a few times throughout the park.

This time we knew exactly what we wanted to do first, that White Water Rafting was up first and then the kids area. My husband and two of the kids had so much fun doing this activity.

Then the kids had a ton of fun going on other rides and playing in a splash pad. We also caught Sesame Street 50th’s Anniversary parade in the afternoon.

And then my husband decided he was going to ride the roller coasters while I stayed in the kids area to take them on some more rides. But once again, the storms and rain started threatening so they closed all the rides immediately, including the roller coasters that my husband had walked over to ride. You can even see the clouds rolling in in these next two photos.

The kids didn’t ride this train like we wanted to; they closed it down in preparation for the rain. At that point there was no rain yet. But they had started to close down the rides. My husband decided to wait at the roller coasters for the rides to be opened up again and I decided to wait in the kids area with the kids. They played at a small park in the area.

We did get photos of Sesame street characters before the rain came all the while hoping the rides would be back and running again soon. But they didn’t.

The rain started to fall boisterously! There was no stopping in sight. They stayed in that little park and played through the rain and loved every minute of it. They kept on playing in the rain for what seemed like a few hours. We all got a very good soak.

Then we decided to head back on the road since the rain just kept on pouring heavier and heavier. According to others, it wasn’t going to let off for the afternoon. SeaWorld ended up closing temporarily for the day (everything down, not just the rides). Between playing in the rain and walking through the heavy rain in the park lot, we all got a very good soak! We got to our van and changed off into comfortable dry clothing since we had our vacation clothes with us (husband waited until we got to a McDonald’s to change). By the time we left the park it was already around 4:30 pm.

Here is what I thought about SeaWorld:

• huge themed park
• not as much sea animal displays as I imagined they’d have
• tons of activities for all (white water rafting, roller coasters, merry-go-rounds, splash pads, etc)
• Awesome shows (whales, dolphins, cats, dogs, ducks, etc.)
• cool parades
• souvenir shops
• face painting, caricature painting activities
• restaurants to eat all day, snack booths
• and so much more stuff to do there (we didn’t even explore the half)

Cons

• long walks due to the distances between activities
• most likely would not be able to cover all the activities just in one visit

SeaWorld and Busch Gardens are by the same company. You can purchase a ticket combo for both places. Also, you can purchase an “eat all day” food pass for SeaWorld restaurants. With this pass, your family can eat each hour while at the theme park. We ate lunch and then dinner with ours. It did save us money. Although the food choices were not appealing to me that much. We’re talking fries, grilled chicken salad, fried chicken, and the like. The restaurant we chose for dinner had a bit more of what we thought were better. They had some kind of steak, rice, black beans, baked chicken (it look delish), chicken strips, carrots, salad, etc. It was more choices to chose for us to choose from. We didn’t explore all the restaurants to know what they served. Only sharing what we saw on some of the menus.

There’s lots to do at SeaWorld, the kids seem to have loved it. Especially since we did two days and they were able to do more and get a much better experience the second day.

Have you ever been to SeaWorld? What was your experience like? If you’ve never been, have you thought of goind? Would love for you to share your thoughts in the comments.