Cookies and Scream- November 2021- Day 5 Seaworld

[Supersofe]

Day 5: Seaworld

My pre-trip report is here

Day 4 is here

Steps: 25 439

I think we had finally adjusted to the time difference and woke up at 7.45am. As I said, for 5 nights we were staying in Hawthorne Suites in Lake Buena Vista. We have stayed here before and found it to be quite good. The rooms are nothing special but you get a living room/ kitchen and then a separate bedroom (with an enormous bed) which isn’t directly off the corridor so nice and quiet. The only problem we found this time was that the air-con in the bedroom was quite noisy so we couldn’t have it on at night, not too much of a problem in November luckily.

We got free breakfast in the hotel, this generally wasn’t great but we could grab a bagel and a coffee to keep us going until lunch. We left the hotel at about 9am and drove to SeaWorld. Today was a Saturday so we had planned to avoid the main parks (and hopefully some of the crowds). We got to the main gates at about 9.30am, they also have the good metal detectors like WDW that you can go through with your bags which definitely speeds up the process.

When we got through the gates we saw a sign saying that Manta wasn’t open today. A bit of a shame but I didn’t mind too much as I find it makes me feel a bit sick. We headed straight to Mako which was a new coaster to us; it looked absolutely huge. We decided to fork out $8 for a locker all day to put our bag in while we rode (you can open and close lockers in different locations around the park). There was no queue for Mako, we walked straight on. I loved this ride so much, one of my favourites of the holiday. It was very very high and that first climb was very scary but it was so smooth and swooping for the rest of the ride. We decided to go on it again as there was no queue and this time we went for the front row- even scarier and very breezy!

After our second Mako ride we looked around the shark aquarium which I enjoyed and there were some really cool sharks. Then we headed over to the Seal and Sea lions, they were very entertaining, shouting at people for fish. There were some babies too which were very cute.

After this, another ride and time for Kraken! We opened another locker here. I enjoyed kraken, it’s a good coaster but it did make me a bit light headed! We left our bag in the locker and went straight on Journey to Atlantis which is a boat log flume type ride. This was looking a bit tired but was fun; we got pretty wet though nothing like as bad as the guests in the front row!

After this we went to look around the Sea Turtles and Manatees, it was a little busy here as I think the dolphin show had just ended. We had some good views of the animals though and they were very cute.

Next up we decided to go and watch the Sea lion show. Before the show they have a mime to entertain you, he was very funny. The show was good, they have changed the shows at Seaworld to make them more educational but the show was still entertaining.

After the show it was time for another ride. We walked around to Infinity Falls which is a relatively new rapids ride. It has a very unique lift system that carries the boat up high. We wore our ponchos for this ride but oh my god it was wet. We got drenched through our ponchos and the others in our boat were soaked to the skin. The worst part was that our socks and shoes were drenched! I would recommend taking flip flops if you intend to ride this, it was really fun though!

We walked through the Sesame St area which seemed to be entertaining the kids round to the Wild Arctic. This is where the meet Santa was during the Christmas period. There was no longer the helicopter ride to the Arctic (I don’t know if this is permanent or just at Christmas) but we had a look around at the beluga whales, seals and walrus.
After this J decided that he fancied an ice cream so he got an ice cream sandwich from the shop. But then after we walked around the corner I spotted the dippin’ dots! A Florida classic, I had been looking out for them all day! We got a large cookie dough ($8.50) and found some seats by one of the holiday festival stalls (they were selling festive food throughout the park).

After this we decided to have another go on Mako. It had got a bit busier by now, the posted wait was 30min but we really waited about 15. We noticed it had got busier in the park in the afternoon, I think this is because locals had arrived for the Christmas party celebration that was on in the evening.

We had another look at the Sealions and then noticed that Darlene Love was doing a show in the big theatre. She’s quite famous in the US for Christmas hits! Before the show, a guy from Seaworld came out to tell us all about the Christmas celebrations. He mentioned that there was an ice skating and fireworks show on tonight that we hadn’t realized. Seaworld really seemed to be pulling out all the stops for Christmas! We enjoyed Darlene Love (I actually preferred her non-Christmas songs) but it was very cold in the theatre! As we came out it seemed like we had missed a rain shower too so that was good!

We went over for another ride on Kraken (30min posted, waited 15). And then went to see the dolphins, flamingos and stingrays. At this point we had pretty much done everything we wanted in Seaworld. We spotted the Christmas market area on the way out and planned to maybe come back later to wander round here (it’s only open in the evening) and watch the show. We decided to just see how we felt later, and left the park at about 4.30pm.

We drove back to the hotel where we had a bit of a rest while deciding what to do next. We settled on Long Horn Steakhouse (Vineland) for our tea. It was pretty quiet even though it was a Saturday. We got the garlic stuffed mushrooms to share and then I got half a rack of ribs with a loaded potato and salad and J went for the Outlaw ribeye with chips and salad. J got a beer and I got an ice tea as usual! This was so delicious, one of our favourite meals of the holiday, It was way too much food though and I ended up taking half of mine home! This meal came to $69 before tip.

After dinner we decided to head to Target, there was a brand new one round the corner. Unfortunately it was quite a small Target (not a super one!) and the Christmas section especially was very bare! We bought some snacks for the room (water, milk (for tea we had brought from home like proper Brits), beer and some crisps. I also bought a cute mug (I love the huge bucket mugs).

We dropped our bits back at the hotel and decided that we fancied the festive celebrations at Seaworld. We showed our parking receipt to get back in (parking at Seaworld is very expensive at $30 but luckily it was included in the tickets we had bought from Klook). We got back in at about 8pm.

We walked around the winter wonderland which was so so lovely. There were loads of little stalls selling festive treats and the decorations were beautiful. We watched some singers doing Christmas songs and there was one area with little scenes and meet and greet with characters from the film Rudolph the red nosed reindeer (a film I am not aware of but is apparently very popular in the US!).

On the big lake they had loads of floating Christmas trees all lit up so we walked across the bridge to look at these and take some photos.

At 8.45pm we headed to the big stadium by the lake to get our seats for the skating show; it was pretty much full by the time it started. While we waited for the show they had a very good violinist who we enjoyed very much. The skating show was lovely, very sweet and with absolutely incredible ice skating. Some of the tricks were so impressive I could hardly watch: two of the skaters did synchronised back flips and then in one routine one of the skaters was flung around by her feet while her head was literally cm’s from the ice! The skating show finished at 10pm and then there was a fireworks display. This was quite short but still very enjoyable. After the show we headed straight back to the car. We were back at the hotel and in bed by 10.30pm.

We were so impressed by the Christmas evening at Seaworld. I would definitely recommend it if you are in Florida at Christmas. They seemed to have put in a lot of effort and it was all included in our ticket. The decorations all over the park were lovely and it got us in the festive spirit, even in November! They also had public ice skating on the rink for the rest of the day too if that appeals to you. We had a great day and had enjoyed a bit more of a relaxing pace; the crowds were pretty light, we had a delicious dinner and we mostly managed to avoid the rain!

Thanks for reading, let me know if you have any questions. I’ll try and get day 6 done soon, a bit of a different one for us starting with a trip to Lake Apopka Wildlife drive!

[mick]

That was a good dayYour Longhorn meal looks delicious


Joan

[Jorgebear]

What a fab day and your meal looked amazingly tasty!

[Goldia]

A great day at Seaworld and a delicious Longhorns dinner.