Each year Here's to Heroes grants free admission to all active duty service members of all branches and up to three direct dependents into SeaWorld, BushGardens or Sesame Place. (This is also true for all active duty Reserves and National Guard members) When we went, we simply had to wait in the normal admission line and show both our military ID's at the gate. According to Here's to Heroes' website, it is now necessary to fill out the registration form online and bring the printed signed copy and your military ID to the gate.
Anywho, I wanted to tell you what we learned. I do a lot of research before we go on a trip. I research restaurants, parking, rides, iPhone apps, reviews, hotels, etc. I used to print out mini vacation novels for us to take on our trip, but in our age of technology I just need a list of addresses, email the rest to myself and download apps (usually only free ones). After all the research, there were still things that I didn't realize before we got there. For example that the SeaWorld in Orlando is soooo much more fun than the one in San Diego. ;) We went in July, so there were crazy amounts of people. Crowds don't bother us though, and after living in big major cities, we can navigate our way through crowds easily.
iPhone app: SeaWorld has it's own app, and it's fantastic. Plus it's FREE! You choose your location (Orlando, San Diego, San Antonio) and then it gives you the different options of the app itself. We used the parking feature (remembers where you parked--we used this feature at Disney World too, since it works off of GPS), the map, show times, restrooms, food, and the ride and wait times. It also had a button that brought you straight to your camera for those "always want to remember" moments.
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| Here is the Map Mode. If you tell them where you wanted to go, it would show a little path on how to get there |
Hotels: Since we own a timeshare, we stayed at one of their hotels, but I also looked into the Disney Resorts and Shades of Green. (I'll post more on these in my Disney Post)
Travel and Parking: Getting to SeaWorld is fairly straight forward if you can follow road signs well. Parking is easy. It's a flat $14.00 for cars and motorcycles, $18.00 for recreational vehicles and $20.00 for preferred parking. Well, seeing as we don't mind walking, we just chose the plain ol' regular parking.
Tickets: I had been to the SeaWorld in San Diego several times, the most recent being the fall of 2008. Although I understand that was quite a few years ago now, at the time it seemed as if nothing had changed since the last time I had been there. Needless to say, I wasn't all that impressed. So, that being my experience, I convinced my husband that there was absolutely no hurry in getting to the park when it opened.
We got there at Noon.
The heat was terrible while waiting in line. I'm always cold, and normally the Alabama heat/humidity doesn't bother me, but this heat was bad. Hubby said " Now you know how I feel". I guess it served me right. We were in line for about a half an hour. The line was very long, but it moved quickly. It was faster if you had cash. I'm assuming there are better times to get in line, but I'm not sure what that would be. Once we got to the ticket booth it was super simple. Have your ID's ready.
Food: SeaWorld did not let you bring anything inside with you. There were so many perfectly good sandwiches stuffed into the garbage cans outside the entry gate. I believe they did let you have water, which we had--although I wished we had the camel-bak Hubby brought to SERE school.
We choose to get the all day dinning plan. It was amazing. It is $30 for one adult and it's ALL YOU CAN EAT! Now for my army man, that is music to his ears! lol. As often as you want, you can go into any of the participating restaurants and get a main entree, a side (or dessert), and a drink. We took full advantage of this and even though we entered the park at around 1:00pm, we ate at about 3-4 places. It's great because we got a nice cold water bottle for "free" whenever we wanted. Those alone are about 3 bucks each. But before you decide I took a couple pictures of what we got.
Also, we would go back through the line and get a dessert if we really wanted one. They also have about 5 places you can choose to eat from and they all had a healthy option I think (the chili in the bottom in vegetarian).
Shows, Attractions and Rides: At the end of the day we were VERY impressed with SeaWorld. I am not a fish person, but I am an animal person. They have a great cat and dog show and a couple of really fun show-shows (not featuring animals hehe). The exhibits are fun too. The roller-coasters were amazing though. Kraken and Manta were by far our favorites EVER. We like big, fun, fast rides. We like the ones that go upside down or have fast turns etc. These two rides have them all. SO FUN. So much better than anything we rode at Disney World.
In the end, we wished that we had arrived there earlier, because we would have liked to go to more shows and we wanted to ride the rides more, but we left feeling we got our money's worth ($14 for parking, $60 for food).
Oh!!! and they actually have kennels and a little pet path where you can keep your pet while you are at the park. You can come out and walk them and put them back in the Kennel. I can't remember how much it is, but it was pretty cool. The guy working it was super nice and even though the pets were kenneled, they seemed to be very well treated.
I, by no means, think this makes me an expert, but this was our experience and if it helps anyone else---GREAT! If anyone has anything to add, please leave it in the comments so we can all learn! Have fun and enjoy a perk of being part of the Army family. I'm sure we'll be going again this year.
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