Go San Diego - SeaWorld and Belmont Park

My feet hurt!! And I can't imagine how my sweetie is still upright... wait, he isn't... but today was a crazy fun busy day!

Since Hotwire got us reservations at Dana on Mission Bay, we have had to adjust our thinking. It has advantages, like the shuttle this morning to SeaWorld and the closeness to all the action including the water. And it also has disadvantages, like no free breakfast and the $39 resort fee... per day!!

But I digress...

We got up bright and early and ate a quick breakfast in the room before climbing on the shuttle to SeaWorld. The sun was up and the weather was beautiful. We arrived shortly after the park opened and things were pretty quiet. My sweetie decided he needed to rent an electric scooter for me to keep my foot from hurting. I protested, but only for a minute. There was lots of walking at SeaWorld and just getting off to see some of the different exhibits was hard enough.

I'm pretty sure I told you about the last time I was at SeaWorld. We had only been there for a few minutes when Baby Scout fell in one of the splash zones and split her chin open. After a taxi ride to an urgent care, several stitches and another ride back, it was almost time to leave, so I never really saw SeaWorld. My sweetie says that after a dozen or so years, lots of things have changed, so we both had a relatively new experience exploring the different areas.

We loved seeing all the penguins.

We started in the Arctic Wild and I think that was my sweetie's favorite part of the entire trip. We came up to a display where the walrus and his wife were "mating" right there in front of a fairly large crowd. Lots of moms were covering their kids eyes and hustling them off, but the dads (including my sweetie), all seemed to be laughing.

He's totally in the zone...

 The first real show we saw was the dolphins. I got to sit in the handicapped section because of the scooter and I was very grateful to only be splashed a little. My sweetie sat behind me in the first row of seats. After the dolphins, we wandered around until it was time to see the acrobats. This was a special show put on for Chinese New Year. It was fun, but the theater was inside and I have to admit to dozing off a few times.

My sweetie wanted to see the entire park, so we systematically hit each venue and crossed it off our list. My very favorite thing was the Sea Lion show. It was so much fun! Lots of acting and dancing and being silly... the kids would have loved it!

The last place we stopped was to see the Orcas. We didn't have time to wait for their last show, but they are amazing! We did watch them feed and they did a few little tricks. We finally left SeaWorld about 6:00 pm and caught the shuttle back to the hotel. We were tired and not sure if we wanted to go back out for the evening or just stay close to the hotel. Besides all that, we were freezing! OK, I was freezing... my sweetie never seems to get cold.

After I had finally warmed up, we realized that we needed something for dinner, so I bundled up in some warmer things and we headed back out. Belmont Park was just down the street and since we had passes, it seemed like the perfect spot. After waiting in line for about 20 minutes at the ticket counter, we were disappointed to discover that we had to check in before 5:30 for the passes to work. I think the girl felt bad for us so she comp'd us 20 free tickets (or the equivalent of 2 rides each) and we made our way into the park.

I had a coupon that got us BOGO hamburgers, so we bought dinner and settled down to eat. When we were finished, we decided to explore a little. The Belmont was a fun and exciting place with rides and food, lights and shopping. We wandered through and around and down to the beach and boardwalk. We stayed out of the sand mostly because of my ankle and partly because it was dark.

We finally decided to spend our ride tickets at the bumper cars and after our first ride we had so much fun that we returned to the entrance and rode again. One last stop for a funnel cake to share and then we headed back to the hotel. It was a perfect ending to a fun and exhausting day!