February 2023: A Central FL Theme Parks Trip: Day 6

Day 6, Friday March 3, 2023

After a surprisingly good night’s sleep I was awake pretty early. It’s the last full day of vacation. Or so we thought…

Eventually we both were ready, and we were in the car around 8:00. Next stop? Breakfast

Nick loves breakfast food. I enjoy them, but on a theme park vacation generally see breakfast as just something that needs to be consumed to power me until I’ve conquered the to-do list and have time to stop to eat. But, this trip was a little more laid back. And, today’s park wasn’t opening until 10 am. So I’d googled best breakfasts near Sea World and discovered First Watch, which is on International Drive, about 3 minutes from the Sea World entrance.

Now First Watch actually has a pretty healthy menu at first glance. But when you really look at the menu, there’s a lot of stuff that we would eat too. So, between menu and location, it was a no-brainer.

We got there about 8:30 and we were seated immediately. It wasn’t overly busy yet. Breakfast here was excellent. I had lemon ricotta pancakes and orange juice. Nick had biscuits and gravy and some cinnamon cereal milk drink. All of it was excellent. Service was very good too. If you’re near a First Watch (seems to be a chain), I recommend eating there.

By the time we left, there was a wait list and a line out the door. We had perfect timing!

From here it was a very easy and quick drive to Sea World. As we pulled into a parking spot we saw…BUSES. LOTS of BUSES.

We headed for the entrance and encountered…school groups. Lots and lots of field trips today.

Entering the park was an easier process than the last time I was here, and pretty soon we were headed for the Dolphin Stadium for the 10:30 show. Except…that theater entrance wasn’t open yet. So we went to the dolphin observation area nearby for a few minutes.

Then we headed to the other entrance, and were able to enter the stadium. I will admit I wasn’t sure how the shows would be since they have moved to “presentations” rather than calling them shows. In the end, they’re still enjoyable. A bit more informative than they were before, but still high energy and still impressive.

 
When the dolphin show finished, we headed for the back of the park. This was a little more challenging than 9 years ago when I was last here because holy roller coaster explosion, but we found our way eventually. We did have an interesting encounter, which led to one of Nick's many fascinating theme park reviews. While we were walking up a bit of a hill, a whole family, all on ECVs decided they needed to pass us. So they passed, repeatedly beeping their scooter horns as they did so. Nick showed incredible restraint and waited until they were past us before he announced that "Sea World is the Walmart of amusement parks!"

As we passed by Ice Breaker, Nick decided a 5 minute wait sounded good, so he headed for that, and I headed inside the neighboring quick serve for two more souvenir cups. Sea World also does the free refill thing, and so having these for the day made sense. However the line, although short, was slow moving, so this was a process. But eventually I had two hideous orange cups in hand, filled with lemonade and Sprite, and I was headed outside to meet up with Nick, who reappeared about the same time.

Nick had enjoyed Ice Breaker but said that "no one designs rides for guys whose nuts have dropped". Good to know?

Refillable cups 12 and 13 in hand, we headed for Wild Arctic, and found that they weren’t running the simulator. The habitat was still accessible though. Just had to walk through the gift shop. We saw some beluga whales and walruses and enjoyed the air conditioning for a little bit. Then it was off to Shamu stadium (are they even calling it this anymore? I deleted the app off my phone already and am too lazy to go find my paper map…), to snag seats for the 12:00 show. They were only running two of the whale shows today…one at 12:00 and one around 7:00 pm, so there was no question which show we were going to see, and we weren’t missing out on an opportunity to get seats, even if it did mean getting there early!

The roughly 25 minute wait passed quickly enough. The “presentation”, much like the dolphin one, was informative, but still high-energy, with impressive whale behaviors and whale-trainer interactions, good music, and very enjoyable. And Nick thoroughly enjoyed listening to all of the field trip kids that were seated in the soak zone scream as the walls of water were sent their way by the orcas.

 
After the show we worked our way back towards Shark Encounter, scoping out the food booths along the way for afterwards. Breakfast had filled us up really well, so we were working our way towards hungry, but not there yet.

On our way, Nick saw that the wait time for Mako was only 5 minutes, so he headed off to ride, and I held all the stuff. I come by my stuff-holding skills honestly. My mom was the queen bagholder when my sister and I were growing up.

Nick liked Mako and said despite the safety restraints, there was legitimate air time for about half the ride. I’m glad I didn’t ride that one!

After a quick bathroom stop that was disconcerting, because it’s under the roller coaster so you hear a lot of screaming overhead while taking care of business, it was off to Shark Encounter for real. Shark Encounter was impressive, as always, and Nick enjoyed trying to get a selfie with a shark, while wearing a Jaws shirt.

 
Time for some alcohol. And maybe a bit of food. We stopped first at the Coaster Cocktails (Seven Seas Food Festival) booth for some grown up Capri Suns. I got the Ice Breaker and Nick got the Kraken. These were fine…drinkable, but nothing remarkable. They were big, though.

While drinking, we headed for the Brazil booth. Much like the Brazil booth in Universal, this one was a win. We got the picanha, cheese bread, and the guava mint caipirinha. Everything was delicious and that guava mint caipirinha was an incredible cocktail.

Once we’d finished eating, we gathered up our drinks and headed for the stadium for our final show of the day: the sea lion and sea otter show. We didn’t get there quite as early as we had for the orca show (and didn’t need to), but thoroughly enjoyed our wait. This stadium has a great view of the roller coasters. We still had drinks to consume. And there’s a pre-show mime that’s hilarious. Nick had apparently seen videos of him before on TikTok or something, but hadn’t realized he was here, so he was excited to see him in person. I just thought he was funny. The sea lion/sea otter show was cute enough. Cheesy, but amusing.

Our tour of the Sea World shows completed, it was time to finish the animal “observation area” rounds. First stop? Pacific Point for the sea lions and seals.

From here it was off to the Dolphin Nursery, where Nick found some shade and I watched the young dolphins, with basically no picture taking success. I was in the wrong spot. But I still enjoyed watching them. They’re such happy looking creatures.

When I joined Nick, he asked if I had checked my email and mentioned that “getting out of here just got more difficult”. I’d seen in the notifications on my phone that doggy behavior class for Saturday, which we already knew we would be missing, had been moved to Zoom because of the incoming storm in NH, but that didn’t seem too crazy and didn’t really surprise me with a foot of snow in the forecast for our region. So, I looked further and found an email from JetBlue with CANCELED in all caps in the subject line. Well, crud.

The email said to stay tuned for an update “coming soon”, and frankly, the park was too loud, and I wasn’t quite sober enough to process anything a CSR could possibly tell me over the phone, so I decided the best way to handle this was to hold off on calling until we were out of the park and see if we actually got an update “soon”. We were nearly done with what we had wanted to do here, so that wouldn’t be long.

We set off in search of some refill machines. On our quest, Nick saw that the wait time for Manta had dropped to 5 minutes, so he headed off to ride. I found a spot in the shade to wait for him, and decided I had processed my thoughts about travel and the adult beverages enough to start the JetBlue process. I called the customer service line, transferred to their text system, was directed to my “manage trips” page, and found that they had already rebooked us on a flight for Sunday. Wow!

The flight was terrible, leaving MCO at 6 am, connecting at JFK with just a 38 minute layover, and then onto Boston, but at least now I knew we had a flight and didn’t have to consider driving home from Orlando, so I could relax a bit. Nick rejoined me a few minutes later, saying Manta was “fun but unnatural…in a fun way”, and then we got the official phone call and emails with the updated flight information. With that information, and having refilled our cups, we set off for the one (open) animal “observation” area left that we hadn’t been to yet. Time to see some manatees.

The manatee area was not the easiest to navigate to. Sea World has a lot of dead ends these days. But we found it. This was a nice peaceful area. The turtles were easier to spot than the manatees, but we did see both.

From here, we actually headed out of the park, Nick commenting on the fact that he’s never been in an amusement park with so many dead ends. Nick has never been to Busch Gardens Tampa. It’s been awhile since I’ve been there, but I’m pretty sure that one is still worse. We stopped for pictures at the entrance, and then headed for the car.

Google Maps did everything I tried to tell it not to do, so getting back to the hotel involved I-4, when I would have preferred International Drive, but we made it. On the way, we (I) started making the mental checklist of logistics we needed to work out for our bonus vacation day, and we started tackling it by having Nick call his dad to see if he could pick up Snow (the dog) from the pet resort for us on Sunday. Our pet resort is only open on Sundays from 9-10 am. We would be landing in Boston at 10:30 am. So if he could pick him up and drop him at the house, we’d be home a few hours later. Thankfully he could.

Once back at the hotel, I called the pet resort to let them know there’d be a change in pickup person and to pay them so that I wouldn’t have to settle up with my FIL. By that I really mean pay them so I’d get the airline points.

Next step was a call to the rental car company. For some reason I had actually read the rental agreement email that came through on Sunday (I usually just glance at the physical rental agreement they hand me in paper form), and had seen there was a phone number to call for extensions. Finding out how much it would cost to keep the car was going to determine a LOT for our next steps and our plan for the next day. Shockingly, a representative answered almost immediately, and even more shocking…extending the car rental until 4 am Sunday added only $18 to the cost of the reservation. Done deal. Make that change. The CSR was super pleasant, which, frankly, was not what I was expecting, but I definitely appreciated it!

Transportation dilemmas solved, it was time to figure out the hotel situation. I got on the various apps and priced hotels by the airport, but didn’t love that idea, because we had a whole extra day. Then I priced Disney, and it was basically the same price or cheaper than hotels by the airport for a value resort. Last step, with that information in mind, I headed for the front desk to see what they could do for me.

Now, I’d gotten a really good deal on this hotel. The room itself cost me $580 including taxes, total for 4 nights (plus $10/night parking). And then I actually got extra money off as a statement credit on my card with a credit card offer I had. And hopefully I’ll get some money back through Rakuten. So…I got a good deal. But… When I went down and explained the situation, I was offered the ability to extend our stay for an extra $220…plus taxes and parking. That put staying here right in line with the price to move to Disney for the night. There was nothing really wrong with the hotel we were at, other than the fact that the outlets near the bed didn’t really work, so we couldn’t lie in bed doing things on the phone AND charge it, and that was getting a bit old (I know, first world problems), but…for the same price…I’ll take the convenience of staying at Disney since, let’s face it, we were headed there tomorrow to occupy ourselves anyway.

So I thanked the girl at the front desk, declined the extra night, and the backup offer of complimentary late check out, and headed upstairs, where I promptly booked us a Little Mermaid room at Art of Animation.

Logistics sorted out, I started brainstorming what tomorrow could look like and Nick started trying to decide on a place to eat this evening.

In the end, we decided to stay very local. We drove basically across the street, to PDQ. I’d heard from a trusted source years ago that PDQ has some very good chicken fingers and sauces. We don’t have PDQ at home, so, while it’s a chain, it didn’t go against our policy of not eating at chains we have at home, and who doesn’t want chicken tenders at 7 pm, after a fun but mentally exhausting vacation day?

We both got chicken tender meals and an assortment of sauces. PDQ is a fast food place, so we had our food quickly. As Nick announced “these chicken fingers are legit”. The sauces were excellent too. If you need some good old junk food in the form of chicken tenders, PDQ is a great option.

Dinner eaten, we headed back to the hotel where at least one of us crashed hard.