Ok before I rant I would like to say Los Angeles has amazing potential, but they will be putting it to use soon so no reason to discuss in depth.
FINALLY, I CAN EXPRESS MY ANGER OF SEAWORLD SAN DIEGOS UNUSED POTENTIAL!! Seaworld San Diego has some of the best animal care in the world, they also have one of the largest marine mammal collections in the world. In the US their artic penguin colony can't be beaten and their Humbolt colony is one of the largest I have ever seen AND THEY AREN'T EVEN ON EXHIBIT! In 2012 they had 5 species of cetaceans and 4 of them were used in shows and the other ones were constrained to a tiny exhibit. Their pinniped collection is actually very well exhibited but the shows are still annoying. I just recently found out that they had Madagascar crested ibis at on point which makes me wonder what other avian species they haven't represented well.
Here's a little castmember story I was told once. In their outdoor turtle exhibit, before the construction of turtle reef. They wanted to have 1 female have eggs so they put two turtles together and the female had eggs. The problem with turtles is you can't tell their gender normally, the only way to know is by the warmth of the egg. And so someone messed up the heat of one of the eggs thinking it was female. So when they put that turtle in the main exhibit it bred with EVERY female turtle. So they had a massive boom in turtles. Almost every male turtle was released. They had to either keep or sell the females because if released they would return to Seaworld. So if you ever those pictures or videos of Seaworld rescue releasing turtles into the ocean remember that was an accident. This also led to them building turtle reef because they had an excess of turtles.
Recently they shut down their freshwater aquarium which had some very special animals. It was really a good aquarium, the best in my opinion. But recently SeaWorld closed it to build a restaurant. There are no plans to put the animals in other parts of the park. They will be sent to other aquariums in zoos. It's a shame to see a nice aquarium like this get closed because it didn't make enough money. They didn't even try to incorporate it into the restaurant so they could preserve the amazing collection of freshwater species.
This is the final piece of my rant I promise, the shows. The rides I can live with, they help bring SeaWorld money and are fun. Sometimes they even provide good theming for animal exhibits. But the shows are the worst. We all know why these animal shows started and most zoos that had them have stopped doing them and now have presentations. But not SeaWorld, instead they have kept their shows with grandstands where there could be exhibits. They are wastes of space and outdated. SeaWorld could be one of the best aquariums in the world if they just got rid of their shows. Sadly this is the way the company is going because it's profitable.
