Sea the World

Somehow Kate has lived in California for 7 years and hadn't been to Sea World - what?! I knew we had to remedy that and this weekend was our first opportunity, so we stuck her in the trunk of the car and went! Well, actually, she drove and picked us up and chauffered us around, but it was still, basically, a strong arm maneuver!

Everything went swimmingly! Cruise Director Kate kicked in as soon as we walked into the park and she got her hands on the map. She plotted out the shows that we would see and we just followed the lead. We first headed over to feed the sea lions, well, we made Kate feed them - so only she would have fishy hands. Bwah ha ha ha!

Then we went to see the manatees (my favorites) who had just lunched and were napping in the back of the tank - boring!

There was a manatee model, so we were able to give 'em a kiss...

...get nibbled by 'em...

...and showcase our incredible strength!

And I scored a sweet plush manatee in a sweatshirt because he's the hip hoppin' rap rockin' ManA-T!

The first show of the day was called "Pets Rule" and we didn't know what it would be like and... I have to say, it kind of blew my mind. It was basically a dog show with tricks and kitschy props and stuff and then the cats came out. Yes, you read that right: CATS. Real, live, trained cats. It was astounding. Not because they were astounding feats, per se. But c'mon! TRAINED CATS?!!

Someone has posted the whole show on YouTube (in HD, even!) if you're curious. If you're pressed for time, just watch the first 15 seconds. You'll be knocked off your chair! (at 2:15 on this video, you can see the cat on the high wire crawling UPSIDE DOWN). My favorite was the cat who climbed the telephone pole and then jumped down into the arms of its trainer!

Anyway, I fell in love with the show. Am utterly smitten. It's the perfect balance of cheesy and downright impressive.

We also watched the seal and sea lion show, which was a parody of reality shows called "Sea Lions Live (SLL)" and was pretty ridiculously bad. Except we kind of really loved it.

We also took a bayside tour by air in the "sky way" which is kind of like the old skyway in Fantasyland at Disneyland. It was really fun and kind of terrifying all at once!

Later, we took a "helicopter" ride to the arctic to see polar bears and beluga whales and even a giiiiiiiiiiiiant walrus. Oh man, that walrus was crazy gigantic! It was too dark to get a picture of him, but trust me: huge! Also, we learned something! Did you know that walruses use their tusks to pull themselves out of the water and move around on the ice? They're natural ice picks! I had no idea.

The whole day was a whirlwind of goodness. We pet and fed bat rays and flamingoes and sea lions and saw all kinds of creepies from the deep (moray eels!!) and fanciful cuties that I just want to smooch (otters!! penguins!!).

We waited to see the evening performance of the Shamu show, which is called Shamu Rocks and is all music and laser lights and awesomeness. It was really fun! And we capped the day by buying hot cocoa in mugs that light up and twinkle.

It's true - Shamu rocks!