SeaWorld
Riding in the helicopters
On the carousel
Riding the planes
Driving the trucks... I'm keeping low to stay out of the draft to keep up the speed.
Helicopters
Planes
Being told where we're going next in the pool
Cookie Monster!
Eating Pop Rocks... he loves them
At dinner last night
We were playing in the pool until Ethan got splashed... the he high tailed it out of there.
Looking at the hotel from the pool
Elmo!
On the plane with his new helicopter
We made it to the Gold Coast safe and sound. The trip was actually really pleasant. A quick train ride, an hour flight and a 45 minute bus ride to the hotel. If only getting TO Australia was this easy. Ethan did really well on the train, plane and bus. He was a big boy on the train standing all by himself holding on the handrail. We got to the airport and checked in and through security without once having our IDs checked. That was kind of shocking… you can’t even check a bag in the US without showing some ID. We didn’t have to take our shoes off or anything going through security. Just put our bags on and walked through the metal detector. Anyway, we grabbed a quick lunch and then headed off to board the plane. While waiting to board I made a friend. There was a 1 year old on the flight as well and he was fascinated with my laptop and kept coming over to see what I was doing. Ethan was kind enough to share his truck with him as well. Though, Ethan wasn’t such a fan when the kid started hanging on me and was touching Kari’s hair. His benevolence ended there and he wedged himself between us and the kid. Anyway, we got on the plane and once again there was no ID check. It was very strange to be in an airport with a complete lack of security.
The flight went really well. The plane had slightly more leg room than the US flights do… but the seats were all leather so that was nice. Kari mentioned they just seemed cleaner because of it being leather. Shortly after take off Ethan fell asleep which was great cause he was starting to get pretty fussy at that point. We landed without incident, got our bags and jumped on the bus to take us to the airport. The Sea World Resort is the furthest hotel from the airport from so we got to see quite a bit of the Gold Coast on the trip up. The thing I noticed that was most strange to me was that the really nice/ritzy hotels weren’t on the beach and instead were several blocks off the beach. I figured that would be right where everyone wanted to be. Once we arrived at the hotel we checked in, checked out the room and tried to find something to eat for dinner. That’s where we started running into problems. We figured with 5 restaurants in the resort food wouldn’t be a problem. And to a certain extent that is true….as long as money is no object. Its quite the scam they have going… the resort is too far to walk to a restaurant so you need a taxi or bus to get back to the city so its just easiest to eat here. However, the prices on the meals ware beyond ridiculous. So, we went to the lobby lounge and I had a burger, Kari had some lasagna, Ethan had fish and chips and we had some ice cream for dessert all for a grand total of $70. They have a buffet restaurant here but it costs $25 for breakfast and $70 for dinner on Fri, Sat and Sun. But, they have a deal where you get both for $57 so we stopped by the lobby on the way back to the room and did that deal for Friday. We really didn’t know how the food was going to be so we just had to hope for the best. After dinner we just headed back to the room and relaxed because we were all pretty tired. After some TV Ethan fell asleep, and Kari and I watched TV and read. The room itself isn’t bad… it overlooks a park. Its pretty dated and for the price we’re paying per night I’d expect a little more, but its clean, has a mini fridge and the beds are comfy so I can’t complain too much.
Friday morning we got up about 6:00, got ready and headed down to the breakfast buffet. It turned out to be really good. They had mini strawberry pancakes that I stuffed myself on, some cereal and fruit for Ethan and Kari had some food as well. For the most part breakfast went off without incident… though Kari accidentally threw a jam packet at another table and then stole some other people’s pancakes. Not really… as it turned out those people were morons and didn’t know how to run the pancake machine. But, if you want to get Kari all wound up just ask her about it. After breakfast we killed some time by checking out the park. However, we didn’t make it to the park unscathed. A lot of the hotel is open to the elements so the stairs were wet from the overnight rain and Kari slipped on the stairs and tumbled down a few. Lucky she escaped with just bruises but she went back to the room and Ethan and I checked out the park. However, it was soaked so we went back to the room. At 9AM there are character appearances in the hotel lobby. The first day it was Elmo who made an appearance in the lobby and we stopped down so Ethan could say hi. He did really well and gave Elmo a high five, got his picture taken and then got a hug from Elmo. After that we walked 20 minutes or so to a small mall down the road that had a tiny convenience store where we stocked up on some drinks, crackers, bread, peanut butter, jelly and bread to try and save some money on lunches. As we were walking it started sprinkling and then rained pretty hard right as we were getting there so we killed some time in the mall and found a swim wear store where Kari got a hat, shirt and new sandals to prevent any further falls down the stairs. I got myself some board shorts and a surf shirt. So, next time I’m on a surf board I’ll at least look like I know what I’m doing.
Once the rain let up we came back to the hotel and headed down to the pool. Wouldn’t you know it… we ended up right at the table next to Kari’s friends from breakfast. But, Ethan had a lot of fun there. There is one part that you can gradually walk down a slant and it gets deeper as you go and Ethan was walking down that and slipped and went under. I was right behind him so I was able to pull him up quick I was hoping he wouldn’t scream… it didn’t really seem to phase him at all. As soon as I put him down he went right back to playing. We played for a while, had some fruit/snacks and then headed back to the room so Ethan could nap.
After naps we had some snacks from the lobby lounge. That was part of our breakfast/dinner package deal. After that it was back to the pool for more playing. Ethan had a great time jumping off the side, getting tossed in the air and dunking me. The sun never really came out today so he was kind of chilly. After a while we retreated to the hot tub to warm up. And wouldn’t you know the sun came out just as it was setting and it was time to go back to the room to get cleaned up for dinner. Not cool Gold Coast… not cool.
Before dinner we made a shop at the gift shop just to see what it had to offer. I thought maybe we could find Ethan a shirt and get in and out quick. I thought wrong. Shortly after entering the store Ethan found a stuffed dolphin and quickly became attached. We attempted several strategies to separate the two of them… all of them crashed and burned so we left the store with 3+1 new stuffed dolphin. I have no idea how we’re going to get all of these ‘friends’ back to the US. Even before we got here Kari and I both decided that there would be no more stuffed animals coming back to Sydney with us. Next time we’ll be sure to consult with the one person who does make decisions around here cause its clear we’ve both lost control of this ship we call our family.
Dinner was good. It is a Seafood Theme all weekend so we were a little leery of that because of Ethan’s picky eating. Oh, and mine as well. But, they had all sorts of good stuff and I ended up trying lamb (pretty good), crab (it was fine) and had some more sushi as well that was good. Ethan had his chicken nuggets, fries, bread and enjoyed the desserts we sampled as well. They also had some steak, pork and vegetables so it turned out to be a pretty good meal.
Today was the day we decided to head to SeaWorld. It doesn’t open until 10:00 am so with Ethan waking up a little before 6:00 we had quite a bit of time to kill. We went back and had some breakfast at the buffet. I again gorged myself on the strawberry pancakes. Ethan had some fruit and chocolate rice bubbles (rice krispies) with some juice. Rice bubbles are his new favorite breakfast and he has them at daycare every morning. After breakfast we headed back to the park and spent some time playing in the sand building castles and watching Ethan destroy them. It was pretty fun. After that we showered and went to the lobby to visit today’s visiting Sesame Street character and today it was…drum roll… Cookie Monster! Yayyy! Ethan again did really well and wasn’t shy at all about giving him a high five or posing for a picture. After that we had another hour to kill and since the sun was out and it was pretty warm this morning we headed to the pool. Ethan and I played and Kari supervised. Ethan did a lot of jumping and bossing me around telling me which part of the pool he was going to jump into next.
After that we changed quick and headed off to SeaWorld. The first thing we saw was the penguins and waited around for their feeding and that was pretty anti-climactic. Once that ended we were off to watch the dolphin show and that was incredible! It was so much fun to watch the animals and it’s pretty incredible what they’ve been able to teach them. Ethan really enjoyed the dolphins and said ‘bye bye dolphins… see you later’ as we were leaving the dolphin cove. After that we noticed the clouds were moving in and Ethan was starting to get tired so we decided to check out the Shark enclosure and then head back for naps. This turned out to be incredibly well timed…. 10 minutes after we were back in the room the heavens opened up and it started pouring rain. We let Ethan sleep for about two hours and then headed back to SeaWorld. By then it had stopped raining for the most part so Ethan’s nap worked out really well for us. When we went back in checked out the Rays cause they were having a feeding and you could touch them if you wanted. Apparently they’re too quick for Kari and me cause every time we tried they deftly dodged our hands. Ethan had no interest in attempting to touch them.
After the Rays we went to the Sea Lion show… it was a lot of fun and Ethan had a really good time. The show was a story about a guy named Al Baloney who overfished the area and was being pursued by the police who were played by both humans and sea lions. It was pretty funny. After that it was off to the Sesame Street show. Bert, Ernie, Zoe, Grover, Big Bird and of course Elmo sang and danced for all of us. Couple songs had the crowd clap along and Ethan was quick to get involved in that. He seemed completely enthralled by the entire thing. After that we started riding all the rides in a section called Sesame Street Beach. There was an Elmo plane ride, Grover’s helicopters, Oscar’s trucks, a Cookie Monster carousel. Ethan had a great time on all the rides and rode most of them more than once. Kari and I had a good time watching him and got a lot of great pictures. The only bad part of the day was when Kari got bird do-do on the back of her white shirt! Not pleasant! We would have kept on riding except the place as closing so we left about 5:00 and headed back to the hotel. There is a monorail from the park to our resort, so we road that home. After that we grabbed some pizza for dinner and Ethan chugged half a bottle of Powerade. Someone is going to have a full diaper in the morning…
Not a whole lot to report on Ethan’s development though he has become pretty proficient at putting on his shirt and sandals all by himself. I’d say he’s about 50/50 getting the sandals on the right feet but progress is progress none the less. Today I was coughing from something going down the wrong pipe and Ethan said, “Are you okay?” He also says “Bless You” when you sneeze and “Thank you” if you say it to him.
The flight went really well. The plane had slightly more leg room than the US flights do… but the seats were all leather so that was nice. Kari mentioned they just seemed cleaner because of it being leather. Shortly after take off Ethan fell asleep which was great cause he was starting to get pretty fussy at that point. We landed without incident, got our bags and jumped on the bus to take us to the airport. The Sea World Resort is the furthest hotel from the airport from so we got to see quite a bit of the Gold Coast on the trip up. The thing I noticed that was most strange to me was that the really nice/ritzy hotels weren’t on the beach and instead were several blocks off the beach. I figured that would be right where everyone wanted to be. Once we arrived at the hotel we checked in, checked out the room and tried to find something to eat for dinner. That’s where we started running into problems. We figured with 5 restaurants in the resort food wouldn’t be a problem. And to a certain extent that is true….as long as money is no object. Its quite the scam they have going… the resort is too far to walk to a restaurant so you need a taxi or bus to get back to the city so its just easiest to eat here. However, the prices on the meals ware beyond ridiculous. So, we went to the lobby lounge and I had a burger, Kari had some lasagna, Ethan had fish and chips and we had some ice cream for dessert all for a grand total of $70. They have a buffet restaurant here but it costs $25 for breakfast and $70 for dinner on Fri, Sat and Sun. But, they have a deal where you get both for $57 so we stopped by the lobby on the way back to the room and did that deal for Friday. We really didn’t know how the food was going to be so we just had to hope for the best. After dinner we just headed back to the room and relaxed because we were all pretty tired. After some TV Ethan fell asleep, and Kari and I watched TV and read. The room itself isn’t bad… it overlooks a park. Its pretty dated and for the price we’re paying per night I’d expect a little more, but its clean, has a mini fridge and the beds are comfy so I can’t complain too much.
Friday morning we got up about 6:00, got ready and headed down to the breakfast buffet. It turned out to be really good. They had mini strawberry pancakes that I stuffed myself on, some cereal and fruit for Ethan and Kari had some food as well. For the most part breakfast went off without incident… though Kari accidentally threw a jam packet at another table and then stole some other people’s pancakes. Not really… as it turned out those people were morons and didn’t know how to run the pancake machine. But, if you want to get Kari all wound up just ask her about it. After breakfast we killed some time by checking out the park. However, we didn’t make it to the park unscathed. A lot of the hotel is open to the elements so the stairs were wet from the overnight rain and Kari slipped on the stairs and tumbled down a few. Lucky she escaped with just bruises but she went back to the room and Ethan and I checked out the park. However, it was soaked so we went back to the room. At 9AM there are character appearances in the hotel lobby. The first day it was Elmo who made an appearance in the lobby and we stopped down so Ethan could say hi. He did really well and gave Elmo a high five, got his picture taken and then got a hug from Elmo. After that we walked 20 minutes or so to a small mall down the road that had a tiny convenience store where we stocked up on some drinks, crackers, bread, peanut butter, jelly and bread to try and save some money on lunches. As we were walking it started sprinkling and then rained pretty hard right as we were getting there so we killed some time in the mall and found a swim wear store where Kari got a hat, shirt and new sandals to prevent any further falls down the stairs. I got myself some board shorts and a surf shirt. So, next time I’m on a surf board I’ll at least look like I know what I’m doing.
Once the rain let up we came back to the hotel and headed down to the pool. Wouldn’t you know it… we ended up right at the table next to Kari’s friends from breakfast. But, Ethan had a lot of fun there. There is one part that you can gradually walk down a slant and it gets deeper as you go and Ethan was walking down that and slipped and went under. I was right behind him so I was able to pull him up quick I was hoping he wouldn’t scream… it didn’t really seem to phase him at all. As soon as I put him down he went right back to playing. We played for a while, had some fruit/snacks and then headed back to the room so Ethan could nap.
After naps we had some snacks from the lobby lounge. That was part of our breakfast/dinner package deal. After that it was back to the pool for more playing. Ethan had a great time jumping off the side, getting tossed in the air and dunking me. The sun never really came out today so he was kind of chilly. After a while we retreated to the hot tub to warm up. And wouldn’t you know the sun came out just as it was setting and it was time to go back to the room to get cleaned up for dinner. Not cool Gold Coast… not cool.
Before dinner we made a shop at the gift shop just to see what it had to offer. I thought maybe we could find Ethan a shirt and get in and out quick. I thought wrong. Shortly after entering the store Ethan found a stuffed dolphin and quickly became attached. We attempted several strategies to separate the two of them… all of them crashed and burned so we left the store with 3+1 new stuffed dolphin. I have no idea how we’re going to get all of these ‘friends’ back to the US. Even before we got here Kari and I both decided that there would be no more stuffed animals coming back to Sydney with us. Next time we’ll be sure to consult with the one person who does make decisions around here cause its clear we’ve both lost control of this ship we call our family.
Dinner was good. It is a Seafood Theme all weekend so we were a little leery of that because of Ethan’s picky eating. Oh, and mine as well. But, they had all sorts of good stuff and I ended up trying lamb (pretty good), crab (it was fine) and had some more sushi as well that was good. Ethan had his chicken nuggets, fries, bread and enjoyed the desserts we sampled as well. They also had some steak, pork and vegetables so it turned out to be a pretty good meal.
Today was the day we decided to head to SeaWorld. It doesn’t open until 10:00 am so with Ethan waking up a little before 6:00 we had quite a bit of time to kill. We went back and had some breakfast at the buffet. I again gorged myself on the strawberry pancakes. Ethan had some fruit and chocolate rice bubbles (rice krispies) with some juice. Rice bubbles are his new favorite breakfast and he has them at daycare every morning. After breakfast we headed back to the park and spent some time playing in the sand building castles and watching Ethan destroy them. It was pretty fun. After that we showered and went to the lobby to visit today’s visiting Sesame Street character and today it was…drum roll… Cookie Monster! Yayyy! Ethan again did really well and wasn’t shy at all about giving him a high five or posing for a picture. After that we had another hour to kill and since the sun was out and it was pretty warm this morning we headed to the pool. Ethan and I played and Kari supervised. Ethan did a lot of jumping and bossing me around telling me which part of the pool he was going to jump into next.
After that we changed quick and headed off to SeaWorld. The first thing we saw was the penguins and waited around for their feeding and that was pretty anti-climactic. Once that ended we were off to watch the dolphin show and that was incredible! It was so much fun to watch the animals and it’s pretty incredible what they’ve been able to teach them. Ethan really enjoyed the dolphins and said ‘bye bye dolphins… see you later’ as we were leaving the dolphin cove. After that we noticed the clouds were moving in and Ethan was starting to get tired so we decided to check out the Shark enclosure and then head back for naps. This turned out to be incredibly well timed…. 10 minutes after we were back in the room the heavens opened up and it started pouring rain. We let Ethan sleep for about two hours and then headed back to SeaWorld. By then it had stopped raining for the most part so Ethan’s nap worked out really well for us. When we went back in checked out the Rays cause they were having a feeding and you could touch them if you wanted. Apparently they’re too quick for Kari and me cause every time we tried they deftly dodged our hands. Ethan had no interest in attempting to touch them.
After the Rays we went to the Sea Lion show… it was a lot of fun and Ethan had a really good time. The show was a story about a guy named Al Baloney who overfished the area and was being pursued by the police who were played by both humans and sea lions. It was pretty funny. After that it was off to the Sesame Street show. Bert, Ernie, Zoe, Grover, Big Bird and of course Elmo sang and danced for all of us. Couple songs had the crowd clap along and Ethan was quick to get involved in that. He seemed completely enthralled by the entire thing. After that we started riding all the rides in a section called Sesame Street Beach. There was an Elmo plane ride, Grover’s helicopters, Oscar’s trucks, a Cookie Monster carousel. Ethan had a great time on all the rides and rode most of them more than once. Kari and I had a good time watching him and got a lot of great pictures. The only bad part of the day was when Kari got bird do-do on the back of her white shirt! Not pleasant! We would have kept on riding except the place as closing so we left about 5:00 and headed back to the hotel. There is a monorail from the park to our resort, so we road that home. After that we grabbed some pizza for dinner and Ethan chugged half a bottle of Powerade. Someone is going to have a full diaper in the morning…
Not a whole lot to report on Ethan’s development though he has become pretty proficient at putting on his shirt and sandals all by himself. I’d say he’s about 50/50 getting the sandals on the right feet but progress is progress none the less. Today I was coughing from something going down the wrong pipe and Ethan said, “Are you okay?” He also says “Bless You” when you sneeze and “Thank you” if you say it to him.
I have a bunch of videos to post, but I'm too lazy to do it. No major plans the rest of the weekend... but hopefully the sun comes back out. Have a happy Easter!
Regards,
Joel
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