Our passes to the Georgia Aquarium were getting set to expire so we took one last jaunt down there. We like to rotate our family passes to different places. The Aquarium is my favorite place in the world so I'm going to miss it. But it's my goal that in two years when we get passes again (someone tell my husband I want passes again in two years) that I will dive in the big tank. That's a bucket list item that I want to do RIGHT NOW but I also want to do it when I'm not this size so - two years from now should be perfect.
It was a weird trip from the beginning as the aquarium was PACKED. It's not that we don't like crowds, but UGH crowds at the humid aquarium are sort of brutal. It's almost like they are going to have to require reservations because it seemed like there were way too many people in there.
It was peaceful to look UP in the tunnels though, even if there were monsters above you. I wonder how loud it is in there, and if we annoy them. I sometimes wonder if they swim by to have a look at us.
In 12 years of parenting, no one has ever gotten face paint in this family. I am going to admit right now that while no one ever asked, I also never encouraged it. I grew up in a household where writing on yourself with a pen or marker was strictly verboten - something that my mother equated with low class ignorance. "It looks trashy." I can say pretty certainly that this is a reason I never encouraged the face painting thing. But the girl asked, and frankly - WHY NOT. Her Daddy said yes and I couldn't think of a valid reason to object so she picked out a seahorse and away we went, crushing the social norms of my childhood.
Shortly after this we made one of the worst parenting decisions we've made in a long time, we decided to go to the dolphin show - and we decided to sit in THE SPLASH ZONE.
We thought, oh some splashing will be ok. How bad could it be? We've NEVER done it. My kids LOVE the Dolphin Show. Mostly they love the dolphins, the show itself is seriously one of the worst things ever. Picture a really bad Vegas show, now make it worse, now make it like Christopher Walken being Captain Hook and singing and dancing, now, add dolphins. It's like that. So we thought for FUN, ONE LAST TIME we'd sit down close.
We had to change seats once because Miles reached behind us and plucked a pretzel off the plate of a man behind us. He was turned, didn't notice, and suddenly Miles was eating a big old pretzel that I am SURE this guy paid 6 bucks for. We moved ONE section over - to dead center.
It started out ok. A little dolphin mist and splash. That's when the full attack began...
If you've never been the victim of five dolphins doing everything they can to soak you with water, and the same number of humans giving them rewards to do so, then you've never been in this particular hell. The amount of water coming off this tank and literally drenching us looked like this...
Jurassic World only had a dolphin. It wasn't a mososaur at all.
As my children shrieked and screamed, and tried to escape up the seats and sobbed and begged the strangers behind us to help us, I considered my poor parenting choices and had to laugh. In fact, I laughed so hard Julia started screaming STOP LAUGHING.
This picture does not adequately show how wet we were, and how unhappy everyone was. But we were trying to cheer Julia up. Every time the dolphins came out she'd start sobbing. She also wiped her sea horse paint all over my shirt, ruining it.
We were wet inside our shoes and top of our heads, and everywhere in between. We had planned to go have a nice dinner - kind of a fun end to a family day out. However, we now smelled like wet dolphin water and weren't fit to go anywhere (not even the Varsity) so we settled on Chinese.
We were eating in Duluth - so if you're local you know how completely accurate this is.
The day wasn't a success. It was perfect family day, ruined by the dicks of the animal world - DOLPHINS.
Oh well, maybe in two years when we go back the trauma will be worn off and they'll have a different show. Additionally - we will NOT sit in the splash zone.
1 comments:
I loved sitting in the splash zone of our zoo's dolphin show. The arena was small and cozy but for some reason my mother was always like "You sit there, I'll watch from over there". As an adult I went to the show and got wet and realized why - dolphin water smells like ripe butt. Ugh.
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