If you read my SeaWorld article last week, you’ll know that my first visit left me pretty much in love.  Since then, this park has been swimming around in my head, begging me to return, and last night I got the chance to head back.  It turns out that I live a whopping 5 minutes away, so getting to the park is a literal hop skip and jump.  With all of that in mind, I am very happy to report that as of yesterday, I am now a SeaWorld passholder!  Yay!!!  While this was a much shorter trip than the first, I still got to hang out with some cool animals and finally got up the courage to ride the terrifying Mako.  Read on for more of the adventure.

Mako

During our first visit, I had ridden Manta, but due to that ride giving me a headache from one of the loops, I opted to not ride Mako as I had been told that it makes you feel like you are going to die.  While that sounded fun under the right circumstances, I decided that I wanted to feel in tip top shape to get on it.  Armed with some confidence and my coaster-enthusiast friend Kira, who was all too happy to take me on the towering coaster, I headed for what would be the scariest coaster I’d ever ridden.

Mako is classified as a Hyper Coaster, this means that it has a drop of 200 feet and goes 73 miles an hour.  All of that seems pretty terrifying and I’m glad to have found out these stats AFTER the ride was over.  What’s more is that you are barely fastened in to the seats as you can see in the photo below (Credit: NPR).

The main reason for this is that as you crest each hill, you actually lift out of your seat, give you airtime and making you feel as though you are actually floating.  I’ll be honest, the first drop was terrifying.  In fact, as he went over the hill, I stopped screaming, because the sight of the drop was so horrifying that my voice gave out.  I held on for dear life and hoped for the best.  One good and bad thing about these high speed rides is that they ask that you take off glasses before the ride so they don’t fall off.  This is good in that it presents me from seeing the awful drops, but also bad as I can’t simply look off in the distance to distract myself.

Courtesy NPR.org

The good news is that after the first drop, while the ride is still scary, it starts to get into a nice rhythm.  Down, up, float a little, down up and repeat.  This means that as the ride progresses, it becomes much more manageable.  I also really love that it’s so smooth.  While some of my favorite coasters are old wooden ones, the smooth as butter feel of this ride makes it feel a bit safer than you might think as you drop 200 feet.  There’s no jerking around and there’s also no upside down.  This means that while Mako is a scary coaster, it doesn’t leave you feeling as though you just got beat up, as some coasters do.  Some people like that feeling, but I appreciated the kindness of this ferocious ride.  In any case, I absolutely recommend Mako was one of the best coasters I’ve had the pleasure to ride here in Orlando.

Fun With Animals

My favorite thing about SeaWorld is that it is so easy to get distracted by adorable animals.  So many times we had planned to go see a show or do something specific, only to get lost in looking at a certain exhibit for a prolonged time.  In the future, I’d really like to take a deeper look at these exhibits and these animals here on the blog, but for now I’ll just go over a couple of the highlights from yesterday’s trip!

First up is this adorable Manta Ray baby, which was very excited to see us, trying to get our attention from the side of the tank.  While weren’t able to touch or play with him due to his young age, he certainly made his presence known.

We then went to feed the Sea Lions, only to find out that we’d arrived too late in the day.  That meant that we got to watch them snooze on the rocks.  These two were snuggling peacefully at first, but a domestic dispute broke out and they ended up parting ways.  Don’t worry Sea Lions, I feel your pain.

This seal was yawning as he rearranged himself, but I like to imagine he was screaming to the heavens:  “STELLLAAAAAA!!!”

We also had to go check out the dolphins, which are fast becoming one of my favorite animals.  They’re just so majestic and beautiful as they do their playful dance below the ocean’s surface.

At the nursery, we got to see young dolphins who are just learning to entertain a crowd.  This one was learning to slide up on the shallow side of the tank.  This is important as it allows the trainers and vets to test their blood and maintain their health.  It’s mother was not impressed, however, and frequently tried to pull it back into the water.  “But MOOOOM!!!”

The babies were all about playing and showing off to the crowd and once again we were distracted, so long that we actually missed the dolphin show we had planned to see.  Oh well, at least we missed dolphins to see dolphins.

More Adventures to Come

Now that I am a passholder to Disney, Universal and SeaWorld I am really hoping to make the visits to these parks a more frequent part of this blog.  To that end, I’d love to hear what you guys would like to see or know about.  Have an animal in mind or a ride we should check out and review??  Let me know in the comments!  And now, it’s time to go out and have more adventures!

Read about my First Trip to SeaWorld Here!