Eating with Shamu

I just flew in from Orlando and boy are my arms tired!

Get it?

Whoo hoo! I flew! Arm pain!

Wocka wocka!

Before I started my flight I saw a billboard for an amazing talk station:


Bin Laden in the morning, Kim Jong Il mid-days and Saddam Hussien drives you home.

But I didn't fly all the way to Orlando JUST to look at billboards. No, not this time.

This time I went to Sea World.



At Sea World I attended the "Breakfast with Shamu and Crew" at the Seafire Inn.

At the door you see posters advertising an appearance by Jacques Feudelemer. I overheard another tourist say his last name is French for "full of crap." Can any one verify this?

PLEASE TELL ME WHO WAS FULL OF CRAP!

Was it Jacques? Or the tourist?





Here is one of the stars of the show. He's a penguin. I asked him if he was in March of the Penguins and he pretended to march. Then I asked him if he was in Madagascar and he laughed. Then I asked if he was in the film The Pebble and the Penguin and he punched me in the ribs.



The show starts just a few minutes after breakfast is served so there wasn't much time to get food if you wanted to catch the whole show. This was a buffet, but not a self-serve buffet. Servers stood on the other side of the glass and prepared your plate.

Service was slow and many people were waiting in line long after the show had started.

I didn't really mind because I was hiding from that penguin.

Sadly, once I got it, the food wasn't very good.

The show starred "Team Seafire" which consisted of Shamu and 4 or 5 of his friends.



I posed for a picture with this dolphin. Dolphins are amazingly smart. This one slipped me her phone number.

The show also starred Jacques:



Yes, he has a mullet, but remember, this is Florida.

The show was a whole lot of fun. Jacques stood on stage and the characters stood in the audience for most of the show.

On the stage, a screen played video clips and featured other characters interacting with Jacques.


The basic plot was:

Jacques is scarred of the water after losing a friend at Sea... World. (And you though MY jokes were lame!) His friends are trying to encourage him to get back in the water, because if he doesn't they lose their charter.

I was more worried for this bird who looked like he was suffering from the bird flu.

The plot was really incidental, however. Really, the show consisted of jokes and songs and lots of audience interaction.

By "audience interaction" I mean lots of women stuffing pancakes in their face and saying to their husbands "Oh god I hope he doesn't try and talk to ME!"

I vaguely remember Shamu doing a monologue about the war in Afghanistan, but I do have a habit of "zoning out" at theses things.


The actor that played Jacques was very, very funny.

There was a family there with a kid that was celebrating his birthday. However, he was terrified of Jacques. Every time he came within ten feet of him, he cried.



So, he sang "Happy Birthday" from across the restaurant with his back to the kid and (in his words) "a much more handsome" customer lip-sync the song.

O.K., the little boy was me. And, I wouldn't really say I was "scared" as much I was "disturbed" by him.

And yes, that other dude was handsome.


After the show is over you get a final photo-op with almost THE ENTIRE CAST:




Overall, the show was great but the food was below average. It certainly is aimed at kids, but as they say "you are only young once, but you can be immature forever."

However, they also say not to lick pennies and that is sooo much fun!