2nd Grade Field Trip

It’s hard to believe another school year is winding down. AB had her 2nd grade field trip on the 19th. We haven’t been to Sea World in years, so we were both looking forward to it.

We’ve been field tripping with the same group since Kindergarten and it’s always a great time. On some trips in the past, we haven’t had to chaperone any other kids, but this time all three of us mommas got assigned a kid, so our group turned into a party of 9 for the first part of the day.

We got checked in and hit the ground running. We were planning to leave by 4:00ish, because we had to get home for graduation parties, so we wanted to knock out as much as we could.

The park crowd was fantastic – it never felt crowded and we had minimal waits on everything we did.

We hit the brand new “Antarctica” ride first.

The ride follows the life of a penguin and then at the end, the exit is the penguin exhibit. It’s fantastic. There’s glass walls so you can see the penguins swimming around and part of it’s open at the top, so it doesn’t feel like a cage. You feel like you’re really right there with them. We all enjoyed watching them for a while. Who doesn’t love a penguin? They always make me think of this documentary I saw when I was in middle/high school about a penguin who was a pet. I don’t remember what country it was in, but the owner would put a little penguin backpack on the penguin and send him to town to get fish. It was the cutest thing ever and I immediately wanted a pet penguin.

After the Antarctica ride, we saw the Clyde & Seymour Seal/Walrus show. On our way to the show, we caught a squirrel literally sitting inside the bottom basket of someone’s parked stroller eating the snacks out of their diaper bag. Emma’s mom chased him off, but he kept running back as soon as we’d turn to walk away! It was hilarious and ended up being one of the day’s highlights for AB. Ha.

We walked through the shark exhibit and then made our way to the Shamu Show. Surprisingly, the kids weren’t very impressed or interested in the show. I remember it being so different when I was a kid, though. I want to go home and watch the Black Fish documentary now, too, after seeing it. After that, we grabbed some lunch.

Up next, we rode the simulator ride that feels like you’re in a helicopter, but I can’t remember the name of it. I do remember that I’ll never ride it again. Ha. I don’t know when I’ll recover from being jerked and jarred around so much. The real icing on the cake was when a kid in front of us puked at the very end of the ride and it was rolling toward the back and I was trying so hard to get out of there before it made it to our aisle, that I got panicked and stuck in my seatbelt and one of the kids had to help me. Ha.

The kids wanted to go over to the play area and ride the little Shamu roller coaster and the carnival-type rides there. Because why would you be impressed with a two-ton killer whale swimming around and doing tricks in his massive swimming pool when you could ride carnival rides?

After that, it was time to hit the gift shop, because the kids all had money burning a hole in their pocket. One of the Mommas in our group had to save all the receipts from the day for what the kid she was chaperoning had bought. Because I guess the parent thought she might be buying a stuffed Shamu for herself. ??People are, what my Granny and Momma would say, “something else.” ;)

It was early afternoon and time to meet the teachers at the front of the park to drop off the kids we were chaperoning for their bus ride home.

After we dropped the other kids off, we hit a few more exhibits.

It was another fun field trip and we can’t wait to see where 3rd grade takes us. Rumor has it, the 3rd graders always go to Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

~amw~