Would you do Antarctica ride first?

[Swim Spence]

For our August vacation, I am trying to plan out our day at sea world, would you recommend going to the new Antarctica ride first? Is it that popular?

 

[DOOM1001]

Luckily I rode it last week as I've heard it's been down lately,I reserved a front of the line pass since I'm a passholder and waited very little but the regular line was as high as 80 minutes.We rode the wild side which in my opinion wasn't wild at all and from what I hear the downtime may be to retune the ride,maybe they can make it wilder,it's also not a very long ride,basically I'm suggesting you ride it early with as little wait as possible, being so short a ride it may not be worth making a real long line.The penguins are always cool and they still have a net so they don't jump out of their enclosure.It's pretty cold in there as well,I heard 30's.

 

[luvallprincesses]

Antarctica was closed all day on Wednesday; there was a sign at the entrance saying it would be. And it truly was. We had hopes this would put us in good shape for when we went back on Saturday. Low and behold, no sign upon entry. We passed through the gates at 9:05 am, went straight to Antarctica. The wait time said 45 minutes. We got in line and moved at a regular pace until after 10 minutes they announced there was a temporary shut down. We decided to give it 10 minutes, after all I've read about temporary shut downs becoming permanent. The line started moving steadily again. Ten minutes later, the announcement came on again. We were pretty close to the front now, so we decided to give it 30 minutes. We never moved a step. At 10:05, we left the line. What a waste of the first hour of park time. So if you put it on your priority list, be prepared to be disappointed and also have a contingency plan for how much of your morning you are willing to sacrifice. It's really disappointing that after a month they still don't have it worked out; they shouldn't have opened it.

 

[DanaEA24]

I was at Sea World on Saturday, June 22 and made the mistake of not going straight to Antarctica. We arrived at park opening and went straight to Manta instead, as we figured the line for that would be bad later on in the day. We rode Manta then made our way to Antarctica to find a 90 minute wait at about 9:15. Not wanting to spend what little time we had in line for 1 attraction, we headed off to do several shows. We checked Antarctica several other times during the day and the wait had increased to 120 minutes then went down to 110minutes, whereas we never saw the wait for Manta exceed 20 minutes. Needless to say, we never got to ride. In hindsight, we should have gone straight to Antarctica then gone about the rest of our day.

 

[PA Princess]

We had 14 day access to Sea World thanks to our day at Discovery Cove, so my family bounced into Sea World a few times during our trip in June. The park was very near our resort (Marriott's Harbour Lake - awesome BTW), so it was an easy filler for evening activities. We did not wish to waste valuable morning time at Sea World (our last trip was exclusively the Sea World parks before our Fantasy cruise, so we did this park heavily last August).

Anyway, we were at Sea World on June 23 and 24 in the evening (arrived after 7) with our goal being penguins. On Sunday June 23 we waited about 50 minutes (posted wait time was 90 minutes). We rode the wild side (not wild) and enjoyed the penguins.

In fact, the next night we went back because kids wanted to see penguins again (kids are 8, 12, 17, and 18...all wanted penguins). They did not love the ride (viewed it as a necessary evil to see penguins really). When we arrived the ride was down, BUT they were allowing people into the que to see the penguins. We waited about 20 minutes and then we spent about 50 minutes with the penguins! The attendants commented that they had not seen a family stay so long in the 32 degree weather LOL We live more north and kids brought hoodies, so all were ready for the cool.

So even if the ride goes down, you may be able to enjoy the penguin exhibit, which my family honestly thought was well worth the wait. We departed Orlando for home the next day, or I have no doubt we would have been back in the evening to see the penguins.

 

[DOOM1001]

On other websites I frequent several people commented on how easy it was to see the penguins at the old penguin walk through attraction,you walked by the building,asked the others in your group if you wanted to see the penguins and walked right in and 10 seconds later penguins,no wait ever.Now they built a themed area with a ride that's nice but overall has been pretty much a dud since it's too short,the wild side is not wild and has a 1-2 hour wait to ride to get to see the penguins.The penguin habitat area is improved over the old one as you're in the cold with them,there's no glass dividing you and it doesn't stink as bad.One thing I was hoping for is that they take down the net keeping the penguins from jumping over to the guests as I would love to see a penguin do that,I'd be willing to grab it and put it back.