How To: Buy Authentic Souvenirs at Sea World (without paying a penny to get into the park)

Ever since our trip to Sea World San Diego last June, our little dudes have been Shamu-crazy. It's probably encouraged/caused by me- I'm pretty big fan about Shamu myself. When I let the kids know I was headed out of town on a business trip recently they started crying saying they didn't want me to leave, until I told them I was going to San Diego and would bring them home some Sea World souvenirs.

The only trick then is to procure said souvenirs. On the way out of the airport, I checked the Sea World souvenir inventory at Terminal 2 of the San Diego airport. Not good. Only 1 knock-off Orca stuffed animal:

I'm sure they had a better selection beyond security in Terminal 1, but I was flying in and out of Terminal 2 so I was doubtful they'd let me past security with a boarding pass for another airline. What to do?

I tweeted @Shamu and asked where I could buy Sea World souvenirs in San Diego without going to the park, and I got a response saying "Standby, I'll check." but didn't hear back with a solution.

After my customer meetings on Friday, I was driving past Sea World so I thought to give a shot at checking if they had some souvenirs outside the park -or- better yet working my way into the park for just a quick shopping trip.

It was about 3PM when I arrived at the gates where you pay for parking. Fortunately, nobody was there taking money- score! I grabbed a parking space and headed up to the park entrance gates. The booths where they sell tickets were also all closed (the park closed at 5PM the day I was there) but tickets were being sold at the Group Sales/Will Call window and there were other people in a short line.

I decided to head over to the park exit to see if I could sneak in for just a bit. The gate agent advised that I could get a Shopping Pass at the Will Call window.

Here's how it works:

• Pay $65 for a refundable Shopping Pass
  
• Spend less than 1 hour in the park
• Buy something in the park and keep your receipt
• Don't get your hand stamped
• Go back to the Will Call window and they'll give you a full refund for $65

Once I got in the park I was like a kid in a candy store, snatching a Shamu Believe necklace for Will, a Shark-themed monster truck that Sam's been talking about since June, and a nice stuffed Shamu to boot. What seemed like expensive merchandise at the end of our last visit suddenly seemed like found money somehow. I exited the park, got my refund and headed back to the car a proud papa who would successfully return home with the goods.

When I got home to Boston, the kids were asleep. The next morning when they woke up they were very excited to see what I got them. I was tempted to hold back the Shamu stuffed animal for a future occasion, but since I'd sent a picture of the airport knock-off Orca, 2-year-old Will was searching sadly through the bag after receiving only his little Shamu necklace. I folded and gave him his very own Shamu to match a similar one I'd bought for Sam earlier in the year.

Although I do like bringing things home to the kids after a trip, I'm not a fan of buying junk at the airport. I'm still fuming about the $20 lead-infested cable car with 4 tiny pieces of Ghirardelli I picked up in San Francisco. Hopefully, next time someone does a Google search for "buy sea world san diego authentic souvenirs" they'll find this piece and it will help a traveler get some nice gifts for their kids. Please leave a comment if this helps- I hope it does.

Further Reading: Tips and Tricks for discounted admission to Sea World and other Southern California Theme Parks

Site Redesign

Just a quick note to mention that I changed the template of this site from a black background to a minimalist white background. I hope it makes the content easier to read- I found the old template's width limiting and it didn't differentiate bold text from plain sufficiently.

I was on the fence about switching over to WordPress once again, but decided to stay with good old Blogger. It might not be perfect but it does 98% of the things I want a blog to do. Even if it's not always the prettiest thing in the world, Blogger is free and I'm familiar with it.

It's still amazing to me how many things need to be tended to in order to get a blog up and running nicely. Selecting a domain provider, Google Blogger custom domain mapping, picking a template, formatting takes forever to tweak sometimes, FeedBurner needs to be set up, icons sometimes need to be changed to accommodate a different background color, AdSense setup, search box setup, favicon needs to be added, nav bar needs to be suppressed, etc etc etc. Whew.

I picked this template up from Deluxe Templates- it's called Thematic. Another site I've used for Blogger templates is Our Blog Templates for their Newspaper theme.

Oh- we have a new E-mail subscription option from FeedBurner. Click HERE to subscribe to updates via E-mail.

Let me know what you think of the new site- especially if you something appears to be amiss. Thanks!

Celebrity Look-a-likes: Carrie Underwood and Betty Draper from Mad Men

5-Fingers of Thanksgiving Fun

Remember when your fingers were small enough to fit in pitted olives?

Happy Thanksgiving!