Sea World- it’s like a zoo with trained animals! We went to Sea World as part of our Family Friendly Vacation spots and really enjoyed our visit. It’s a nice laid back park to spend the day having fun and still educating your kids (it’s a sneaky way of teaching them something!) Our older kids were ready to go off on their own for a bit, so we let them hit up the roller coasters while we looked at animals.  Here’s the tips and tricks we found on our visit.
Parking:
Once again there was closer parking available for a extra fee of $5  .  By this time on our trip we were pretty tired and had a full week of theme parks and events behind us so the extra money was worth it to us.

Tickets:
Thanks to Sea World we were able to get 4 free tickets through my blog, and my husband being a teacher was also able to get 4 free tickets through their teacher program.  That combined with the preschool pass available to all kids ages 3-5 years old that we got online for Addie we ended up being able to go without purchasing any tickets!

So if you are a blogger, teacher, or have a child ages 3-5 there’s some tips that will get you some tickets.  Otherwise, checking local hotels for discounts and coupons is the next best thing.

Shows:
The shows are amazing!  We went to the Shamu show and the Dolphin show. Both were amazing and our kids loved them.  For the Shamu show my older kids wanted to sit in the wet zone…. like row 3, so needless to say they got SOAKED.  The rest of us sat on the last row of the wet zone and figured if we did get wet it’d just be a little bit….. well we were right, up until the last splash of the show where we got a direct hit of water! Our 3 year old and our friend’s daughter were not happy about getting splashed.

The dolphin show we had learned our lesson and sat above the wet zone.  That show was a little more theatrical with dancers, divers, and music.

Rides:
Sea World isn’t about rides really, but there are a few good rides. We really enjoyed the Atlantis ride.  In fact, my hubby rode it one last time before we left and got splashed by a water bomb at just the right time and got soaked!  We had to tease him because it looked like he had wet his pants from behind….. he’s such a good sport- first thing I said was “I need a picture for my blog!” and then he posed 😀 Love him!

Petting areas:
There’s lots of places you can pet fish if you don’t mind getting your hands wet. My kids really enjoyed those.