Any Recent Participants-Wild Arctic or Sea Lions Upclose

[keishashadow]

Trying to decide which tour to choose: Wild Arctic or Sea Lions Upclose. DH enjoys feeding the seals, especially enjoys walrus & harbor seals.

Have searched but not many recent reviews here or elsewhere.

Have read the animals are subject to change on Wild Arctic ? but it does sounds interesting

Sea Lions sounds cute and the feeding opportunity would be a bonus. Trying to determine if it is approx an hour in length too.

Lastly, can't find on the website the actual time(s) of tour. I do see that you need to check in upon arrival. Is that when you receive a specific time? Wondering as I wasn't planning on arriving to SW the day after HHN until close to noon...wouldn't want to miss a tour time.

Any hints welcome!

 

[eeyorefanuk]

Hi
Is wild artic the one with beluga, twos seals, walrus?
Is so we enjoyed it
The walrus was "behind bars" and fed a fish
Seals were able to stroke them
Beluga had a little "pat of head/stroke"

 

[eeyorefanuk]

Hi
Had a look if you pretend to book
Put in your date and how nany people the time comes up
A lot are 11.45

 

[keishashadow]

Hi
Is wild artic the one with beluga, twos seals, walrus?
Is so we enjoyed it
The walrus was "behind bars" and fed a fish
Seals were able to stroke them
Beluga had a little "pat of head/stroke"

Thank you so much for that info!

Hi
Had a look if you pretend to book
Put in your date and how nany people the time comes up
A lot are 11.45

Ah ok, will play around with the site. Thanks again.

 

[leiaorgana]

We did the Wild Arctic tour of June this year and the Sea Lion one a couple of years. Personally, I didn't think the Sea Lion one was worth the money. It's cheaper to just buy a couple of trays of fish and feed them because that's the same amount of interaction as you get on the tour.

For the Wild Arctic tour our tour time was 2:15pm - 3:15pm but it could be different now. On our tour there was 12 people in total (our group of 3, a family of 4 and another family of 5 but the grandma of that group ended up sitting most of it out because her ECV couldn't get through some of the doorways of the backstage areas and she didn't want to be out in the heat in the outside backstage area which a lot of the tour takes place in)

The meeting place for the tour is by the bronze polar bear statue by the Wild Arctic shop and that's where it ends too. The only thing you're allowed to take with you on the tour is your sunglasses and a bottle of water. Everything else had to be put into a locker, which were one per family/group and you had to leave your sunglasses/bottle with the tour leader when you were interacting with the Belugas. The first part of the tour was just an explanation of how they take care of the animals at the Wild Arctic enclosure and the second part involved interacting with two Harbour Seals (stroking & posing for pictures), then stroking & feeding a Beluga Whale (we did this kneeling on a platform in the bit where you view them after coming off the ride but the trainers told us normally they do this bit of the tour in the back enclosure, it just depends on where the Belaguas want to be at the time) and then we ended the tour by feeding fish and squid to a Walrus that's kept in it's enclosure behind bars because they don't like being touched and then posing for some pictures with her. Overall I definitely think it's one of the better tours that SW offers now.

 

[keishashadow]

We did the Wild Arctic tour of June this year and the Sea Lion one a couple of years. Personally, I didn't think the Sea Lion one was worth the money. It's cheaper to just buy a couple of trays of fish and feed them because that's the same amount of interaction as you get on the tour.

For the Wild Arctic tour our tour time was 2:15pm - 3:15pm but it could be different now. On our tour there was 12 people in total (our group of 3, a family of 4 and another family of 5 but the grandma of that group ended up sitting most of it out because her ECV couldn't get through some of the doorways of the backstage areas and she didn't want to be out in the heat in the outside backstage area which a lot of the tour takes place in)

The meeting place for the tour is by the bronze polar bear statue by the Wild Arctic shop and that's where it ends too. The only thing you're allowed to take with you on the tour is your sunglasses and a bottle of water. Everything else had to be put into a locker, which were one per family/group and you had to leave your sunglasses/bottle with the tour leader when you were interacting with the Belugas. The first part of the tour was just an explanation of how they take care of the animals at the Wild Arctic enclosure and the second part involved interacting with two Harbour Seals (stroking & posing for pictures), then stroking & feeding a Beluga Whale (we did this kneeling on a platform in the bit where you view them after coming off the ride but the trainers told us normally they do this bit of the tour in the back enclosure, it just depends on where the Belaguas want to be at the time) and then we ended the tour by feeding fish and squid to a Walrus that's kept in it's enclosure behind bars because they don't like being touched and then posing for some pictures with her. Overall I definitely think it's one of the better tours that SW offers now.

Thank you!

The description of the Sea Lions tour referenced something asking to buckets of fish to feed. Think I'll hold off on that for October trip and hope to see it 'on sale' on black/blue Friday sale.

the wild Arctic tour sounds like a winner to me.