by Gaz
Sea World Orlando
A few days ago, we postponed our Cape Canaveral trip again due to inclement (biker unfriendly) weather, and decided to visit Sea World instead. I’ve been to Sea World in San Diego twice now, once in 2003 and again in 2005, and I had a fantastic day on both occasions. Looking at the Sea World website, I have to admit that Orlando’s Sea World looks almost the same as San Diego’s, with the exception of the new Kraken Roller Coaster at Orlando. I was expecting a very similar day out again, and where I normally get pretty stoked about such things, wasn’t terribly excited about the trip… especially if it rained.
I couldn’t have been more wrong! The weather was forecast to reach 100 degrees at noon, and then a 50% of stormy showers from 3pm, so we went on the Atlantis log flume to cool down after lunch, and straight on the Kraken afterwards as the queues were only 5 minutes long. While the two parks do share a very similar list of attractions, the layout was different, and the water-life shows were in a whole different league. Here’s a short video compilation I made of some of the more spectacular parts… if you don’t want to watch the whole thing, at least skip to the end for the breath taking finale.
The thunder showers never did arrive, so we happily waited for the curiously named Mystify late night fireworks show before riding home. The fireworks over the lake with coordinated water jets and lights were all pretty spectacular in their own right, but the highlight of the entire day was what appeared to be a hologram in the centre of the lake. After watching dumbfounded for a time, I realised the clue was in the name, Mystify: it’s all done by projecting images onto a spray of mist out of the water. But I can’t do it justice here, you’ll just have to go and see it for yourself.
Incidentally, if you can bear 90 minutes of hardsell from a timeshare sales team, you can get a pair of tickets for just $20. I payed the extra $60 to spend that 90 minutes enjoying myself at Sea World, but judging by the reaction of the vendor when I said I’d rather pay than waste 90 minutes, most people do take the sales pitch in exchange for the lower price.
There’s always next year. Or if you fancy a Winter holiday in the Philippines (and my apartment is not tiny!) the offer is there… :-D
I still do a lot of my coding and testing on Linux (in VMWare), but couldn’t give up the iLife integration, Garage Band itself, and (recent macbook troubles aside) the way you can just plug stuff into a mac and have it work!
Thanks for the offer. I’d take you up on it, but i’ve got a few other plan’s in the pipeline atm which don’t really take me anywhere near Orlando.
iMovie is great for simple video editing. As for more advanced video editing, well, you really need to fork out some $$$ as sadly there doesn’t seem to be anything else free that is worthwhile using.
Although of course if you get fed up of Mac OS X and decide to use Linux instead (insert sarcasm here), i’ve heard good thing’s about Kino. Sadly though there doesn’t appear to be a Mac version and i’m not quite ready for Linux again yet – so i’ll have to stick with iMovie, hehe. :)
Well, if you schedule a visit before the 6th Sept, you’re more than welcome to stop at my apartment for a week.
Incidentally, the YouTube video I linked was done with my first use of iMovie… it was pretty fun trying to line up bits of camera footage with certain parts of the music, and have the splashes land on beats :-D I love being a Mac user!
I don’t think i’ve ever been to a Sea World before. Sounds like an interesting place to visit. :)
Will have to put it on my very long TODO list.