Sunday November 26th 2022

I’ve been planning to visit SeaWorld since their Christmas season began on November 11th, but weather and other events kept me from getting there. Today was the day. The weather wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. It was a very warm and humid day in the mid to upper eighties. A cold front passed through the area around 7PM and dropped a little bit of rain, but it didn’t get in the way.

I didn’t get as early a start as I had planned. It was shortly before 11AM when I departed the RV park and noon on the dart when I cleared the entry gate at SeaWorld. During the first half of my visit I did all of the traditional SeaWorld shows and viewed all the animals. The Dolphin and Orca shows were as good as ever. The sea lion and otter show is OK, but there is more emphasis on the comedy of the hosts than the animals. Here are some pictures from the traditional SeaWorld animal part of the day.

The Christmas part of my SeaWorld day really began around 5PM. There were a few things like Santa Claus, Rudolph and an Elmo Christmas show going on all day, but I was interested in the evening entertainment. The two big shows I watched were the O Wondrous Night and Winter Wonderland on Ice shows. The Ice show was very similar to the show I saw last year and was followed by the park closing fireworks.

The O Wondrous night show wasn’t staged last year because of the pandemic. It is a telling of the Nativity from the perspective of the animals that were there. A donkey, dove and lamb represented by puppets tell the story of their contribution to the birth of Christ. Their egos provide a comic edge to the story which is primarily told by the chorus singing Christmas Songs. At the conclusion of the show real animals join the singers and dancers on the stage. The animals included goats, sheep, miniature horse, llama, lots of doves and 3 camels for the wise men. It was a nice show that could have been good if the volume was a little lower. Here are the more Christmas type pictures.