Halloween Spooktacular

Hello! And welcome to my highly anticipated Sea World's Halloween Spooktacular post. Let me warn you up front that this post will be heavily laden with photographs. Anybody got a problem with that? No? Good, now, let's proceed.

We never made it to Sea World on Saturday. Well, technically that's not true. We did make it to Sea World, but it was getting late in the afternoon, and we were all tired and hungry, so we left after I got a couple of new passes printed up for Sarah and Emily. We decided to get up early on Sunday and try it again.

This first photo was taken while we were waiting in line to get in. I've never had to wait so long to get into Sea World before, but the park didn't really seem especially crowded, so I'm not quite sure what was up with the delay.


Once we got inside the park, we got our maps, synchronized our watches (not really, we just made sure the girls had Sarah's cell phone), made a plan to meet back up, and then let Sarah and Emily go off on their own for the first time. I was a little uncomfortable with letting them go, but I'm a bit overprotective of my girls. My dad drops my little 13 year old brother and his friends off at Busch Gardens whenever they have a work day off from school, so I know that other parents do the same thing.

Anyhow, after letting Sarah and Emily go, Phil and I went off with Katie. Sea World had the entire park decorated for Autumn and Halloween, so we had to stop and take a few photos here and there.






Phil and I took Katie on the Sky Tower ride, which she quite enjoyed. She loved looking down at everything and trying to spot Shamu in the water. I took this photo of Katie and Phil while we were waiting to go on the ride.


After the Sky Tower ride, we walked around some more, and eventually made our way to the Sea Lion and Otter theater where we were to meet up with Sarah and Emily for the Clyde and Seamore show. Katie is posing here while we waited for the girls to show up. In case you hadn't already guessed it, Katie dressed up as her favorite Sesame Street character, Abby Cadabby.


When the girls caught up with us, we all went into the theater to watch the show. In case you haven't seen the show before, it's a pirate themed show, starring a pair of sea lions, with a bit part by a sneaky little otter, and a cameo appearance at the end of the show by a large walrus.







After the show, we got lunch and rested a bit.




One of Katie's missions for the day was to go see the penguins. She had watched Happy Feet on Friday and was excited to see the real penguins. When we finished eating our lunch, we all headed over the the penguin exhibit.


Just in time for Halloween, the Headless Penguin!


No, he wasn't really headless; he just had his head turned all the way around and bent down to pick at his back. I don't know if he was scratching an itch or cleaning himself or what, really.

From the penguins, we headed over to take Katie along the Trick-or-Treat path. They had little Trick-or-Treat stations set up every so often along the path, and the kids got a different prize (mostly candy, but sometimes not) at each station. They also had people dressed up and posing for photos with the kids all along the pathway. Katie really liked some of them (the pretty ladies), but others she ran away from. Whenever she got scared, she would say, "I want to go home," so we knew to get here out of there quickly.





After making it all the way through the Trick-or-Treat path, we stopped for a photo op with the Shamu statues.


Here, Katie is enjoying some of the loot from her bag - a lollypop, to be precise.


Next, we went to catch the Shamu show, Believe. We've seen the show before, and I really find it be rather boring compared to some of the other Shamu shows I've seen, but Katie just had to see Shamu before we left.














Emily took this photo of Phil and me when we paused for a moment on our way out of the park. I was hoping to get a nice shot of the two of us, but I forgot how tired we both were and that my lipstick had disappeared quite some time before then, so it is what it is.


All in all, we had quite a nice day together at Sea World. Although, I must say that by the time we made it to the Shamu show, my feet were absolutely killing me. I had bought a new pair of shoes the night before to try to keep from hurting my feet and hip (I've been having trouble with my hip lately when I walk a lot) while we were at Sea World, but it obviously didn't help. I'm not sure if my feet hurt so much because they weren't used to being enclosed (I always wear flip-flops), or if there was some other reason. I ended up trading shoes with Emily, who was wearing flip-flops, so that I could walk out of the park relatively pain-free.