Daily Archive for July 24th, 2008

Recent Marineland trip observations (including new baby Beluga whale)

This past Monday we went to Marineland. While we were there, I picked up my season’s pass, and we will definitely be going back.

General Observations

  • All of the water was a lot cleaner than previous visits. This includes the water in the aquarium, the Orca tanks, and the Beluga tanks
  • The show in the aquarium are very short and are hardly worth doing. They had three pacific walruses (two females and one male). They were fed and did a couple of small tricks. The whole thing only lasted a couple of minutes. However, I did learn something. The announcer claimed that tusks are like wisdom teeth. Sometimes they are removed if they will cause a problem. Out of the three walruses, only one female had tusks
  • There used to be a gift shop right next to aquarium in the same building. Obviously the space is still there, but it isn’t a gift shop anymore. That is now the place where you rent strollers and things
  • We watched the 5:15 stadium show on a Monday. The crowd was very small, so there wasn’t much “electricity” in the air. It had rained a bit earlier in the day, so I’m sure the park cleared out.
  • During the part of the show where the dolphin’s perform, there are normally four of them together. All four came out, but one of the dolphins wouldn’t do anything. The trainer was very patient and touched the dolphin a lot (obviously trying to coax it into performing), but it just wouldn’t do anything. It just didn’t seem interested at all
  • There were 16 belugas in one tank, and only 6 in others. There was someone sitting there with a clipboard and you could see two smaller Belugas swimming. Apparently there was a baby born two weeks ago. The other baby is actually the one that was born last year.

Ride Observations

  • I was technically within the height limit of the Orca Screamer, but realistically I was too big to go on. I didn’t fit well into the seat and hurt my back a bit. My 5-year-old son just loved the right, though
  • We went on Orca Screamer, Viking Adventure, Lady Bug Coaster, and Space Avenger
  • There were spider webs everywhere! I’m sure all of the heat, moisture, humidity makes it difficult to control. My sons kept pointing them out
  • all sorts of languages, always one of the interesting things about Niagara Falls
  • Pretty well everything seemed to be in working order. The only thing I noticed was that one of the “spaceships” on the Space Avenger wasn’t working

I didn’t take enough good pictures to put up a new gallery, so I’ve just posted a few below. You can click on the picture to see a larger version


The Viking Adventure


An Orca Whale


A Dolphin


A Beluga whale mother with its new baby (only 2 weeks old)


A Pacfic Walrus

Various Niagara Falls videos

Niagara Blog has posted some nice Youtube videos. Check out a few of them:

Port Colbourne, Ont. to Niagara Falls, Ont. 39 Miles July 14

Someone with a Blogger blog has posted about a recent trip to Niagara Falls. They are cycling.

Our road was a flat beautiful bike path leading us right to thundering glorious Niagara Falls. It was magnificent to arrive here on bicycles, but a little overwhelming with all the tourists…

Our day off found us touring the falls on the Maid of the Mist tour. We climbed on board a boat packed in with many other tourists wearing blue plastic rain ponchos. Then we rode right up to the falls where the water was flying up so hard and fast, that the falls disappeared from view, only the noise reminded us of the overwhelming presence of the falls. That and all the water sloshing around inside my shoes.

Gale to go to integrity commissioner over NPC concerns

From the Niagara Falls Review:

Bob Gale plans to use provincial “whistle-blower” legislation to ask Ontario’s Integrity Commissioner to look into the process the Niagara Parks Commission used to make some recent controversial decisions.

“My complaint is always (that) process must be honest and fair, especially when we are representing the provincial taxpayer,” Gale wrote in an e-mail explaining his decision to file an application with the integrity commissioner’s office. He said he planned for formally file the paperwork Thursday.

WWE legend Ric Flair coming in August

From the Niagara Falls Review:

Can we get a “Woooo!” The Nature Boy is coming to town.

Wrestling legend Ric Flair will sign autographs at the WWE Niagara Falls Store on Clifton Hill Aug. 12 at 3 p.m. A wristband policy is in effect.