Evening all,
No practices or games tonight so time for an update. But before that, on this first day of the NFL season, I got to see the Grey Cup today. For our friends from south of the border, it is the cup that goes to the Canadian Football League champion. Teams have been fighting for this cup for 102 years. Here is what it looks like.
Oh yah, there were a couple of Hamilton Ti-Cats cheerleaders there too.
OK, let's head back to Orlando.
August 17th
So today was our first visit to SeaWorld and we knew the one thing Declan and I wanted to Ride was Manta (Pooksma was still on the fence). Before heading our we needed to have some breakfast and get our front-of-the line passes.
First stop, 8 am - the concierge desk. Here they gave us our coupons for the passes. These were free courtesy of the hotel. They gave us coupons for both days so we wouldn't have to stand in line on day 2. They also asked us to sign up for the Marriott Vacation Club presentation. If we did it, they would give us $100 gift card. We passed on this one.
Free breakfast was next and it was a bit busy. We found a table that had a Starbucks cup sitting on one end so Declan and I grabbed the table. (Starbucks was a hotel selling point for Pooksma and she became good friends with the lady working the counter.) As soon as we set down, this lady came running over saying it was their table, she had set her cup there to save it. I didn't want to get into to it so I said we would move but it looked like nothing more than an empty Starbucks cup to us.
Quick breakfast and back up to the room but the key wouldn't work. I took the elevator back down and the clerk reprogrammed the key. Back up to the 6th floor, key doesn't work, back down to the front, clerk checks the key and says it is a good key, she have maintenance meet me at our door. Back to the 6th floor, 5 minute wait for maintenance, tries our key with no luck and no light on the lock. Uses his key to let us in and says they will need to send someone to fix the lock. We decide to try our other key that we had left in the room and it works. We tell him not to worry about it, we will just use the one key.
We grab our stuff and hurry down to catch the 9 am shuttle because there isn't another until 10:30. We could have walked but we were on the opposite side of SeaWorld from the gate. Takes abut 10 minutes to get to the park with an stop at Aquatica and one other hotel. We stop at one of the kiosks on the way to the gate to get our park and free dining passes. We get our front-of-the-line bracelets just inside the entrance.
We skipped by the Shamu picture and headed into the park. The first thing we come across is this:
This is an amazing ride! A bit scary at first with the climb and the laying on your belly position you are in but once you hit that first drop the excitement doesn't stop. The wait time was listed as 20 minutes but our bracelets got us on right away. I don't think we ever waited for a ride at SeaWorld.
Couple more Manta pictures:
This is the opening climb
This is the bottom of the first drop.
We grabbed our stuff from the locker and headed towards Journey to Atlantis. Along the way we came across this trainer and her friend.
We found another locker and headed to the front of the line. Pretty good ride but it was showing some wear and tear. After the first ride Pooksma retrieved the camera from the locker and Declan and I went for another journey. This time we were in the front row.
On this ride it isn't the big drop that gets you wet, it is the people on the water canons and a much smaller drop just around the corner from the big drop.
Next up we headed to the other side of the park for the Clyde and Seymour show with a stop at the Penguin Encounter along the way