Dining with Shamu......

[DisneyNic]

There are some old threads about Dining with Shamu at Sea World, but I was wondering if anyone else wanted to share their experience with it. Recently or not so recently, with pics or without. I seem to have a little extra money that is of course burning a hole in my pocket so I am wondering about treating my DH, DD, DS, and my mom and dad to lunch with Shamu on our trip to California in Sept/Oct. TIA!!

 

[pumpkin5156]

I was at SeaWorld a few days ago and though I didn't participate in the dining event, I was very close to it and could see and hear everything that was going on.

It's an all you can eat buffet with 1 or 2 actual killer whale trainers that "narrate" different facts about the whales. They also bring the whale out once everyone is seated with their food and it does a bunch of show things for you. No one was able to touch it, but it does swim up close to the see-through plexi glass that you are eating behind. You can ask the trainers questions and though they don't command the whales to intentionally get you wet, sometimes some water does make its way over the glass, which is about waist high on me (I am 5"4').

They assign you tables, some being right against the plexiglass and another row of tables behind that one. You don't get to choose where you sit as far as I know.

In the off-season, you can make your reservation that day to do breakfast or lunch. They were advertising it when I was there, and there seemed to be lots of room for it.

Have fun!

 

[Disneylvrforever]

I've Dined w/ Shamu a few times and we didn't eat behind plexiglass. It's an open spaced area next to one of the whales' pools and it has a netted barrier so you have a good distance away from the whales. The food is really good and you can get as many Shamu cookies as you want! As the op said, there are trainers that tell you facts about the whales and they will do some commands for the wales to do tricks. They will even have the whales pose for ppl to take pics. (Wow, I just made a rhyme! not intentionally of course) You don't get wet, even though the floor might be, and you might just get a few drips of water on you depending on where you sit. And if you do Dine w/ Shamu, you get VIP seats for a Shamu show which is not in the Splash Zone, so you don't have to worry about getting wet.
HTH!

 

[DisneyNic]

Thanks for the info. I have been doing searches on webshots and youtube for pics or videos or whatever I could find. I am pretty sure I am going to do it. After seeing some of the pics of how close you actually are to the whales, I know that my kids would absolutely love it. I'm really excited about it. So, you can't request where you sit, but does anyone know if they do it by when you made your reservation or when you actually check in that day or is it just a random thing? Does anyone know how early you can make a reservation?? I want to make mine as soon as I can just in case the tables are assigned that way. Thanks.