Ultimate Animal Experience!

Sea World San Antonio is great little weekend destination.  It's a fun place for roller coasters, cute animal shows, and a nice water park.  We had lots of fun when we went back in October.   We took a long weekend to enjoy our Sea World visit.
We took one day just to watch all the shows and ride the roller coasters.  We took a second day for the water park.  Our 3rd day was just for our special your!  While there are some great rides and shows to enjoy when visiting Sea World, what really made this a MEMORABLE experience was the Ultimate Animal Experience.  This is a separate tour that can be booked regardless of whether the park is open or not.  It's on the pricey side, but it's a unique experience  worth looking into.

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We entered the park through the employee entrance and hopped into a van.  There are a surprising number of back roads that wind throughout the park and that's how our backstage tour really gets around.  Our guide tried to plan our tour for the best parts of the day, but feeding schedules and show times can shift your tour around a little bit.  We were in the park before it was officially open and got to interact with some very lively sea lions.
We were the only ones there, so the kids got to go around the entire area and look at these beautiful creatures.  All the while our tour guide gave us more details on the shows and other things the park had to offer.  That's when the real magic begins.

We got to have our own personal sea lion show.  Yes there is a sea lion show at the parks, but this one was just for us! 
Our sea lion did some great acrobatics for us and then we got our own time to meet and greet him.  We each had our turns taking pictures with him and getting to pet him.  He felt almost rubbery in texture.

It's hard to argue with that smile!  The amount of interactions we got with just the sea lions was fantastic!  Our sea lion was quite the ham and gave us quite the vocal display.
Next we rode over to check out the Beluga Whales.  I wasn't ready for this next part.  Thankfully Niko was the minimum 48in for the experience.

We went to change into our wet suits before we could enter the beluga tank.  It's odd squeezing into one of these suits, but necessary.  Belugas like their water VERY cold!  A few belugas did flips and jumps for us.  And then we got to take turns petting and getting a high five from our friendly beluga.  Their fluid filled heads felt odd and squishy.  The kids loved it, though they did complain a little about how very cold the water was.

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After a quick shower and change we drove over to the penguin enclosure.  If you've ever been to a zoo with penguins, it's a similar feel of seeing them behind glass swimming around.  But when we walked out our guide walked us to the back of the building into a small side room.  We were very surprised to be greeted by a rockhopper penguin.

Niko's favorite animal is the penguin so he was over the moon to get to meet and pet one!  We thought that was the end of the tour, but then another employee grabbed us and took us to the back of the enclosure where the king penguins just walked up to us to say hi.  It was pretty amazing how comfortable the penguins are around people.  

So COOL!

We got to stop and have our complimentary lunch that comes with our tour before we headed off to meet our next set of animals.  We didn't get to get in the tanks with the bottlenose dolphins, but they were very playful.

The flipped and jumped, showed us just how awesome they are in the water.  The splashed us and then even sprayed us with water.

It's hard not to be cheerful about dolphins.  They are just a fun animal to play around with.  The kids just loved it!

Back in our van our guide drove us back over to go and meet an Orca!  The Killer Whales are what Sea World is famous for, so it was good to get to interact with these majestic sea creatures.  We got to toss him some fish and give him some commands.  He waved at us with his tail fin and waggled his huge tongue at us.  It was a fun little interaction, though this one was shared with other groups so it did feel a little rushed by comparison to the other animal experiences.

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Our last stop before our tour was over was the Shark Tanks.  I didn't know what to expect but we got to see the Sharks pretty close in their tanks and got to pet a small shark in a separate tank up above the tanks.

​The sharks weren't the most exciting encounter, but it was still pretty cool to touch one.  We drove back to the employee entrance to end our day at the park.

After meeting with all those animals the kids had to have some souvenirs from their experience.  Each one insisted on having a stuffed sea lion to take home with them.  These were some amazing experiences!  I know my kids will never forget getting to touch and play with all these awesome sea creatures!  It was so worth the experience!

Let us know if you have any questions about the Ultimate Animal Encounter Tour or want any more information on Sea World!  We'll be glad to help you plan your next vacation.  We can book almost any kind of travel, not just DIsney!

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