Seaworld Christmas

My in-laws sent us to Seaworld for Christmas. I enjoyed the day and found it to be a surprisingly musical experience.

Not far into the park, I heard a recording of an all male chorus singing chant. Naturally, that intrigued me. When the third phrase arrived, I started hearing the instrumental accompaniment and recognized this "chant." It was "Winter Wonderland!" Those first two lines really do sound like chant when heard in this way.

Then we took a bridge, not to nowhere, but to Shamu Stadium. This long bridge was lots of fun. There was music playing and several choirs of fountains in the lake responded to some of the music. It was a lovely and energetic water ballet. I also heard a bit of Mannheim Steamroller's version of "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" on that trip across the bridge. I've been playing the arrangement myself, and faster than the recorded performance (which I hadn't heard until yesterday). But my tempo was based on the metronome marking in the piano score.

Seeing the really big and smart animals in the Shamu show was very moving. This was more ballet, only with whales.

Shamu was presented as a member of the same family as all of us humans who share the planet, and this made some sense to me because Shamu seems a bit like some giant great-grandmother that many of us visit from time to time. And she lives in Florida.

Crossing the bridge again, we saw a skywriter writing "Jesus loves you" up above.

Later, we heard a good brass quintet called "The Penguins" play various Christmas carols. We enjoyed their playing, their rapport, and their festive costumes. The tubist also did an excellent and heart-wrenching imitation of a melting Frosty the Snowman.

In the evening, we saw Shamu's Christmas celebration. This was kind of the strangest worship service I've attended. I liked the inter-species aspect of this worship. But it was also really designed as a show.

One thing I found truly worshipful was singing Christmas songs along with the five thousand people who were watching the words on giant screens before the show. The calmness and innocence of song hovering over such a group was special. It did make me feel a bit like we were one big family.

Also worshipful was witnessing the cooperation and communication between people and these beautiful animals. That was poignant, too, because I bet there is much more we could say to each other, if only we knew how - more important things than "spin around," etc. But we saw some of the deeper things being said through the loving attitudes of the trainers with the animals.

The end of the show really was over the top: a very loud gospel choir, leaping flames, and jumping whales.

I had different feelings about the jumping of the whales depending on what music I was hearing when the jumping was going on. The upbeat gospel version was the most invigorating whale jumping.

On the way back across the bridge the last time we heard the end of "Sleigh Ride" as well as the Orlando Symphony playing some the sound track for Arctic Express from a distance.