Al Rivas

Review of Sea World of Texas

I've no idea who's writing the 4 and 5 star review...

I've no idea who's writing the 4 and 5 star reviews because this park is terrible. We go for the kids cause they're too young to know any better but this place needs a lot of work. Trees for Christ's sakes. Might you folks consider planting a hundred or so ? It's South Texas and shade is about as rare as the entertainment out here. Ridiculous.

Partner up with a horticulture / arborist group who will advice you on what to plant, may even donate trees and help with the planting. You could attach plaques to the trees with descriptions of the species, etc. Combine sea and land ... the point is shade trees !

You've got that large pond / lake area with the embarrassing grandstands. An enormous homage to failure and a glaring symbol of SW mgmt failure. Could you imagine walking into DisneyWorld and seeing the Disney Castle shutdown ?

Sure, you're going to retort that the Orca Showcase is your castle but it's way off on the edge of the park ... Now, what must every patron walk around ? That enormous, ugly, fenced off, nothing.

OK, obviously, whatever that was meant to be didn't work out. I've not seen a show there since the Clinton Adminsitration. It's a huge nothing in the middle of the park that all visitors must navigate around on foot. Put a show in there or at the very least put ferries to cross that thing east west and north south.

I'm not talking huge expensive ferries. Small ferries, only takes minutes to cross. Families would get a kick out of boat rides while shortening geting from place to place. These should be free. You'd be making the park more enjoyable (and shady) which will sell more tickets.

As my kids are now mid-teens I don't see us going there again to walk a marathon for the few rides and shows while baking. Yes, I get SW is about conservation but if that's the case just take my money, don't torture me under that Texas sun pretending to entertain me.

The whales and dolphins are beautiful of course and I do enjoy the shows but even then, they are a guilty pleasure seeing those magnificent animals in tiny pools. Surely SW mgmt has to know this is a common concern. I love the sea. Surely there's much more of the sea you can bring to audiences that doesn't mean Orcas and dolphins ... oh and the penguin area stinks to high heaven every time we go. My guess is you have a problem with the cooling.

If you vent to get that stench out then your cooling becomes orders of magnitude more costly. If so, I suggest to you that penguins might not be a good attraction. Penguins are cool but nobody enjoys inhaling penguin farts. You go in there, "Oh cute penguins. Uhm, what the heck is ... oh mah gawd, let's get out of here."

I'd recommend site SCUBA and snorkeling (that lake perhaps) and aquariums. Let people drive mini-boats and maybe a sub (pretend sub). I've had many fishtanks and never, not once, have I or my wife smelt fish farts. Just saying.