Breakfast With Sham Sham

There was one more place we had to go while we were in San Diego. Sea World. It's been four years since our first visit and Harris still talks about Shamu almost daily. We wanted to do something special and memorable for him involving Shamu, besides the daily shows, so we booked "Breakfast with Shamu". This is as close as you can get to Shamu. Needless to say Harris was really excited.

The kids are obsessed with "Slug Bugs" so they were super excited to see this parked out front of Sea World when we arrived!

We got there early to get checked in and then headed to the waiting area to be seated. Harris was immediately plastered to the glass waiting for Shamu to swim by.  And Shamu didn't disappoint.

I love this picture. It was like Shamu was saying "hi" to Harris. He just hovered there. It was priceless.

When we got seated it was right next to the glass! It was so fun. It was pretty much a private show for those of us eating breakfast. Well, it was more than a show. There was a lot of talking about the whales: their likes/dislikes, personalities, size/weight, how they train them, things like that. There was also a Q & A. Harris was enthralled with everything. He especially loved how close we were.

Sooo excited when Shamu finally came out!

Watching Shamu is more fun than eating breakfast

Shamu waiving to Harris.

Sham Sham (as Harris calls him) doing tricks for us.

Harris once again plastered to the glass trying to be as close as possible to Shamu.

Saying goodbye after breakfast.

When we were finished with breakfast and were leaving we ran into one of the trainers. Liv and Harris were pretty excited to talk to her. They had tons of questions (that they didn't ask during the Q & A) that she was happy to answer. Harris asked her how he could be a trainer and Liv wanted to know if her ears ever hurt after diving so deep (40ft)  into the pool.

After chatting with the trainer Harris was ready to see the sharks so that's where we went.

The shark tunnel

I think it is time for Sea World to redo the "Shark Encounter" area. It's way too crowded and you can't really see anything very well because of it. Harris didn't seem to mind though.

I don't remember what Harris was telling me but it is a cute picture. :)

From the sharks we went to the Sea Lion show. We had never seen it before but Liv is going through an "I love Sea Lions" phase so we made sure to see it. I'm glad we did. It was hilarious!!! We will definitely see this again.

This is Clyde he is the star of the show. He is soo cute!

When the show was over the kids wanted to see and feed the other sea lions that are outside of the stadium.

They sit up against the wall and wait to be fed but if you aren't careful and feed them quickly the seagulls will swoop in and snitch the food out of your hands. It's so funny to watch them fight for a spot up against the wall.

This guys wasn't interested in eating. He was working on his tan, I guess. ;)

Harris loves the show "River Monsters" and last year when we were there they had his favorite river monster, the alligator gar. That is what he wanted to see next. We headed to where they were and were surprised to see that they were gone! They had redone the "river" area into a "sea turtle area". Harris was very disappointed about this but he enjoyed watching the turtles. And the area is pretty cool.

There were probably 30 (3 or 4 different kinds) sea turtles swimming around.

When we had had enough sea turtles we headed out to see if they had moved the river monsters to a different area. We didn't find the gars but we did find the piranhas. This was pretty exciting because they were going to be feeding them.

Harris was pretty excited to see the piranhas.

The feeding was not as exciting as we had thought it would be. Since they are in a tank and not in the wild they get fed regularly. So there was no feeding frenzy, mostly just nibbling. The kids still enjoyed it.

As we continued looking at the fish in the piranha area we did find one small gar. Not nearly the 10ft giants they had last year.

Harris and his best gar impression.

Harris had been begging all day to ride the roller coaster that they have which gets you wet. It wasn't super warm but we finally caved and decided to go on it.

I thought I was zoomed in a lot closer than this but they are in the back 2 rows.

When we were done with the ride it was time for the Shamu show to close out the day. Our favorite spot is off to the left of the center stage and up about 5 rows. We have learned that getting a good spot is was easier if just one person goes in and gets a spot to save for everyone else. So Chet usually runs ahead and sneaks in solo to save the rest of us a spot. It works out really well.

Happy when the show starts

The show this year was all new and was really cool. It seemed that there were a lot more tricks and way more water! Harris loved it! He oood and awwwd and laughed and cheered through the whole thing. His favorite part though was when they tried to feed Shamu just one tiny fish and he shook his head "no" so then they offered him the whole bucket of fish and he nodded "yes". He laughed and laughed at that. It was a great way to end the day.

As we exited the show we stopped at Shamu's tank to say goodbye. This was not an easy thing to do. Harris feels the same way about Shamu as I do about Disneyland.

Having a hard time saying goodbye to Sham Sham.

After saying a tearful goodbye we packed it up and headed out to our next destination, Disneyland!