Sea World!
Our activity the next day was Sea World! I was pleased with this decision - I was glad to experience some other stuff in Orlando, since Jason and I will be doing all Disney when we come back. I adore Sea World. The first thing I had to do was get my picture taken with this backdrop:
Penguins are my favorite animal! Sadly, this was basically the most I saw of the penguins all day. We didn't get to the penguin area until around 4:00, where we found out they were simulating arctic winter, and the sun sets at 3 pm. Because of this, they had basically shut the lights off and the penguins were sleeping. You could hardly see anything! So disappointing.
The first thing we did was go on the Manta. I LOVED this roller coaster! It's hard to explain, but you're basically lying on your stomach - so it feels like you're flying superman style. The queue is great - you pretty much walk through an aquarium, and there are lots of fish to look at, so it really doesn't feel much like waiting at all. Went super fast. And on the ride you dip down near bodies of water, the scenery is just really nice. Here's a glimpse of the coaster:
Next we decided to go to the Shamu show. This was fun. I don't know, maybe I'm a dork, but it actually made me sort of emotional. The dolphin show later did too. I was just thinking about how lucky I was to be here in Florida seeing these amazing things and how special it really is. I think the music makes you feel emotional too.
That was probably the only complaint - everything is really theatrical and set to music, which is nice, but they don't talk to you anymore. I would have loved some information about the whales and how they train them, all of that, but they don't tell you that anymore.
After the show we went on the Arctic Exploration ride, which is a motion simulator. It was okay, but not really one of my favorites. In the gift shop, Jason couldn't resist posing for some silly pictures (he does that a lot):
Then it was time for lunch. We went to the Terrace Buffet, which promised pizza, pasta, and salad, buffet style. I have to say, this was a let down. Three kinds of pizza, three kinds of pasta, two kinds of salad - the pictures on the sign looked a whole lot better than the actual food. The pasta was a bit too hard or al dente for me - I know some people like that, but for me it just seemed undercooked. The pizza was ordinary, plain, pepperoni, or vegetable. Salad you had regular garden or ceasar. I had the regular, and while it was decent, and the dressing was good, it was literally just a bowl of greens with dressing on them. No tomatoes, carrots, nothing. I got some parmesan cheese from the pasta station to put on it. I think the roll was the best thing I ate there:
Dessert was okay, they had cookies and dessert pizza - that was a choice between cherry or apple. I got cherry. It was extremely sweet, tasted just okay. The cookie was just a cookie, and it was hard, not soft:
I would definitely try somewhere else if I ate at Sea World again.
After lunch we went to a few places, including the shark tanks, which were cool. Then we went to the dolphin show. This was AMAZING. If you go to Sea World, you absolutely must see this show. It's not just the dolphins doing amazing tricks (which they do), the people in it are incredible. There are all sorts of acrobatics and great diving going on, it was just breath taking. Here's a sneak peek. I took some video which I will hopefully be able to share a link to at some point, but for now, I have this:
Then we had to ride the Kraken. The line promised a 10 ten minute wait... well, we didn't get on that coaster for over an hour. It was a fun ride, but definitely not worth the hour and 20 minute wait. I don't know why there was such a sudden surge of people, but they did pause the ride for about 15 minutes to add another car. So that added to the time.
After that we grabbed a snack - I had a frozen lemonade. It was good. The perfect thing right then, since I wanted something refreshing but not too filling.
Finally, we headed to the penguins, which I mentioned earlier as a disappointment. But the puffins were active and cute!
After exploring the gift shops briefly (Jason's family is mostly guys, so there was never much time to explore the gift shops), we went home!
Up next: Downtown Disney for afternoon!
your drama with girls dresses is so close to mine that it's scary. I am glad she got it ordered. I feel bad I didn't handle my situation as well as you 
GAH you're getting married in, really, like TWO MONTHS!!!!!!
I mean, it's great she got a job, but it stinks that you won't be able to see her, like, ever anymore--- although, at least it's a great excuse to go to France, right? And I am sure your cousin is SO excited--- what 15 year old girl doesn't like getting all dolled up anyway?!
All this silly growing up and people moving away... it is tough for sure- but glad it worked out with asking Jason's cousin, and hopefully that dress works out! 
