|
SeaWorld California
& Aquatica California
San Diego, CA
SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment
Ride Rehabs - The following dates are subject to change
Journey to Atlantis - NOW CLOSED through 2025
Skyride - NOW CLOSED through 2025
Shipwreck Rapids - Apr. 21 through May 2
Sea Dragon Drop - Apr. 28 through May 2
Electric Eel - May 6 through May 8
Skyride - May 12 through May 16
See Arctic Rescue (2023) in Action Here
Click Here to read our review of Howl-O-Scream 2023
 Park News - (4/13/2025) SeaWorld San Diego confirmed that the Viva La Musica festival will return to the park on Fridays, Saturday and Sundays from May 2 through to May 18th. The musical event will feature free concerts from popular latin music performers throughout the park, including headlining concerts from:
May 3 & 4 - La Sonora Dinamita
May 10 & 11 - Banda Maguey
May 17 & 18 - La Original Banda El Limon
Visit the official website for all the details, including the arrival of the SoCal Taco Fest on May 3rd and 4th only.
(3/20/2025) What's Next For SeaWorld San Diego?
(3/15/2025) Good news for SeaWorld San Diego Skyride fans, the latest photos sent my way show that the refurbishment on Tower 1 looks to have been completed, while crews make preparations to begin the same restoration process over at Tower 2.
Special Thanks to the Von Roll VR 101 Skyrides and the Disneyland Skyway page on FB for use of the photos.
(2/22/2025) The restoration of the Skyride at SeaWorld San Diego continues! We’ve been sent some great photos to share of the current state of the work on Tower 1, which apparently also included sending divers down to remove all the barnacles from the tower’s support posts.
(2/11/2025) SeaWorld San Diego has confirmed that the park will host a Summer concert series this year, with all concerts set to take place in the park’s Bayside Amphitheater. The list so far includes:
June 21 - Baby Bash
June 28 - Ying Yang Twins
July 12 - Soulja Boy & Bow Wow
July 19 - Fat Joe
July 26 - Waka Flocka Flame
Aug 2 - I Love the 90’s Tour
Aug 9 - Trina
Aug 16 - Ginuwine
Aug 23 - The Turnt Up Tour
(2/2/2025) Since our last update on the SeaWorld San Diego Skyride, the tower has now been completely wrapped up, which I believe is done ahead of sandblasting it to remove the paint and any rust from the surface ahead of repairs, priming and repainting it. A couple of pictures borrowed from the Von Roll FB page show off how things are now looking which you can find below.
In other news, the theme park running event fad has now spread to SeaWorld San Diego, as the park will be hosting two such events in 2025: the First Annal “Fins and Flippers 5k Run/Walk” taking place on April 13th and in the fall, there will be the Howl-O-Sprint 5k.
—
The Fins & Flippers 5K invites participants of all ages and fitness levels to take part in a 3.1-mile adventure through the park’s scenic grounds, featuring stunning views of Mission Bay and SeaWorld’s incredible animals and exhibits.
Along the course, participants will enjoy ocean-inspired surprises, aquatic-themed photo moments and the chance to meet lively, sea-inspired characters. The event is perfect for runners and walkers of all abilities, and all 5K participants will receive an official race shirt, race bib with a timing chip and a unique finisher medal, along with the opportunity to qualify for special sea-worthy awards. The day also includes a Kids 1K Fun Run for younger participants who will also receive a race shirt, bib and medal. Ocean-themed costumes, accessories and attire are encouraged, though masks are not permitted.
"We’re always looking for ways to enhance our educational and entertainment offerings, and this event is a perfect fit—combining our mission with a fun and healthy experience for the whole family,” said Tyler Carter, SeaWorld San Diego Park President. “As a zoo and aquarium, we’re excited to make this run truly unique by allowing participants to run through the park, passing by some incredible animals.”
—
Visit the official event site for all the details about how you can participate.
(1/23/2025) Good news came in about SeaWorld’s SkyRide from our friends at the Von Roll VR 101 Skyrides FB group. As you can see in the pictures below, a barge holding up a massive scaffolding set around the SkyRide towers has been put into place as work begins to restore the two towers set into the water.
We can expect to see the towers stripped down, rust removed, repair and primed, and then repainted as part of the restoration process, which will hopefully see the park’s iconic SkyRide reopen in a couple of months.
As I noted, it is a shame that Six Flags Great Adventure did not choose this path to take care of their own Von Roll Skyride, and instead is planning to remove it from the New Jersey park for good. With the loss of the one at Six Flags, I’m told that there are now only 8 Von Roll Skyrides left in the USA, two of which are in San Diego (SeaWorld & the San Diego Zoo) and a third one is also operating in California at California’s Great America, which sadly is living on borrowed time as that park will be closing good most likely sometime between 2028 and 2033.
(1/21/2025) I missed this article back in December, but a pair of environmental groups in San Diego were threatening to file a lawsuit against SeaWorld San Diego over the park’s fireworks show, which they claim is causing pollution in Mission Bay. The park’s fireworks shows are launched from a floating barge in the bay, typically located on the narrow strip of water just behind the park and Fiesta Island.
According to Phillip Musegaas, Exec. Dir. of San Diego Coastkeeper, one of the groups behind the lawsuit efforts, “”Whatever debris doesn’t burn up drops into the water.” “They really need to follow the permit, which requires them to clean up after each show.”
While I don’t work for SeaWorld San Diego now, I did for about 15 years from the mid 80’s through to 2000, and I can actually speak a bit about this actual issue from first hand knowledge. It is true that whatever doesn’t burn up in the sky will typically fall back down and into the water, where it will eventually wash ashore on Fiesta Island. As I recall, the procedure when I was there was that there were pyro crews who would search the water for any obvious large floating debris after each show with search lights, but their primary focus then was to look for “duds” or unexploded shells, that would float on the top of the water like giant cardboard eggs.
Meanwhile, first thing in the morning a crew was dispatched by boat into the bay on a barge from the park to make landfall on the island and pick up any and all fireworks debris that could be found along the beach. I can’t speak as to what they are doing now, but in my era, this was done each and every morning after a fireworks show. And I should know… for a couple of summers, I was one of the crew members trained to drive the barge, and we would go out and do this very job. We would fill out trash bags with an assortment of debris that looked mostly like wet cardboard and paper wrappings from the fireworks, the occasional shell fragment, and once in a log while we would even come across a dud. Everything found was brought back to the park for proper disposal.
There are some other claims about poorly treated water in the bay, but based on the training we were given about where we were allowed to walk on Fiesta Island and where we were absolutely not supposed to set foot on due to the waste treatment taking place on the island itself just over the berm from the beaches we walked upon, I’d say that the vast majority of anything funky found in the bay came from Fiesta Island itself, and not from SeaWorld.
And please… as someone who was born and raised in San Diego, we were all taught by our parents to avoid swimming in the bay at all costs. You can look at it, take a boat ride on it, but unless you wanted a bad case of Hepatitis (or a third arm growing out of your back), you sure as hell were not going to be swimming in Mission Bay anywhere near Fiesta Island. There are things long buried underground all around the area by the government, military and various related industries that are best left undisturbed as the entire land all around SeaWorld was all used as a landfill and filled with all kinds of industrial waste in the 1950s. People tend to forget this history and every so often, someone tries to do a little digging in the area only to be stopped when some strange and possibly toxic gases begin to erupt from the sand beneath their feet.
So to be honest, fireworks shows in the sky over the bay should be the least thing to upset these environmental groups based on my own experience.
(10/24/2023) According to Theme Park Insider, the battle between SeaWorld San Diego and the city of San Diego over $12 million in unpaid rent / lease payments may now be moved to a Federal court. Or at least if SeaWorld has their way, as the company has filed a notice to move it from California Superior Court to the Federal system as the chain is incorporated in Delaware and has their HQ in Orlando, Florida. The move is also a more logical request for SeaWorld Entertainment, as a way to move the case to a more unbiased venue for the hearing.
2025 - Journey To Atlantis Update / Jewels of the Sea: The Jellyfish Experience - (2/19/2025) SeaWorld San Diego has set the official opening date for the park’s new Jewels of the Sea: A Jellyfish Experience. According to Blooloop the new attraction is now set to open on March 15th, 2025, which was pushed back from an originally intended 2024 opening timeline.
(1/27/2025) SeaWorld San Diego offers up some new details for the park’s newest additions coming in 2025. The new Jewels of the Sea: A Jellyfish Experience will feature “a variety of jelly species, beautiful storytelling and a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes in three unique galleries. This remarkable exhibit features a 10-foot-tall acrylic archway living of jellyfish, one of nation's tallest jelly cylinders in the country at 14-foot-tall, as well as a touchable globe of cascading water and jellyfish and a host of shareable, bespoke photo-op moments for families and adults alike. The piece de resistance is the exhibit's finale, a stunningly immersive, virtual gallery with walls and ceiling covered in LED digital video panels that display captivating oceanic scenes. Ranging from calm waters to dynamic, energetic crescendos and 360 explorative experiences, guests will be whisked away to an interactive playground that they can enjoy time and again.”
As we also mentioned, Journey To Atlantis will return in 2025 after having been “reinvented, paying tribute to the original beloved version while adding new elements to create a more exciting and immersive experience than ever before. The new Journey to Atlantis will emerge with a refreshed storyline, as well as new water elements and special visual effects and new show elements that pay tribute to the original attraction while making it better than ever.”
(11/2/2024) A bit more information has been revealed as to the current planned long-term closure of Journey to Atlantis at SeaWorld San Diego. According to the local news the park has closed the 20 year old attraction (2004 - 2024) to reopen it in 2025 after making an “update” to the ride experience.
SeaWorld says the updated Journey to Atlantis, the park’s first roller coaster, will be adding a refreshed storyline and adding new theming, water elements and special visual effects “to create a more exciting and immersive experience than ever before”.
If you’ve ridden the first Journey to Atlantis in Orlando, you know that the Florida version was given a very large dark ride style experience in addition to the coaster/flume fun thrills, while the San Diego version was essentially cut back to be an almost entirely outdoor flume experience. The one exception to this rule was the unique indoor elevator lift segment inside the central tower that happens just before the high speed finale. Going back to the initial plans for the attraction, there was always the intention to make this lift segment a more highly themed experience, but budget constraints and technology limitations of the time always made it so whatever they did try to install here over the years go mostly unseen and unheard, so I'd love to see this area finally fleshed out.
Here is a fun fact most guests don't know about… Journey to Atlantis in San Diego not only underwent a number of physical revisions throughout the planning phase, many of which included more indoor sections and traditional indoor lift hills, but an overhaul to the entire THEME and STORYLINE of the ride experience was heavily considered. Rather than stick entirely with the more Greek Mythology oriented concept, a few other story-lines were also in the works, some of which were tied to some of the alternate layout concepts. As I recall, a very strong favorite that almost made it once the final layout was given the green light in San Diego was one that would have tied Extraterrestrials to the mythic lost city of Atlantis.
Now here me out… because the attraction was in development from the late 1990 until the first shovel broke ground around 2002, and at the time one of the hottest entertainment properties on TV at the time was The X-Files on the FOX network that ran from 1993 to 2002. An official license was not expected (though I’m sure someone in the corporate office probably looked into it) but the floating artifacts in the lagoon that your boat slowly circles around after the first splash-down before returning to the tower was once envisioned as a crashed UFO sticking up out of the water, surrounded by bubbling water and steam vents. Alien forces were at work here, affecting the very currents of the water to pull your boat from here inside the Atlantis tower itself, which would have had a bit of an alien technology makeover inside. Once inside the riders were essentially ‘captured’ within the tower, and a beam of light would come down from the top of the shaft, pulling your boat into the air and scanning everyone during the hidden elevator style ascent to the top. In the end, I don’t think there would have been any actual aliens present there, but I think the story was that it may have been a piece of ancient alien technology left behind still running on auto-pilot, essentially scanning the boats for any sign of lost Atlantean DNA signatures, once at the top, and upon getting a negative scan for the designed DNA traits, the boats were kicked out at the top of the tower and sent on the final wild roller coaster style ride back to the bottom. I think the raw idea was that if any lost tribes of Atlantis were found, the Atlantis tower would then beam a signal home for a rescue mission to be dispatched to pick-them-up, but given the presence of the crashed UFO in the water out front, that last rescue mission may not have gone as planned.
Anyway… that’s what I recall hearing about first hand a quarter-century ago when I still lived in San Diego. The San Diego park has always had a bit of a semi-hidden obsession with the idea of alien technology… as you may recall how the park’s old Mission: Bermuda Triangle ride ended with a mysterious other-worldy rescue energy coming from the depths of the trench. Maybe another day I’ll talk more about a planned coaster concept where Manta sits down that was approved and then canceled at the last second in 2008/2009 when the economy hit the skids. This would have involved a launched coaster with aquatic themed cars that would eventually launch into a large show-building and take a deep dive to the bottom of the ocean for an encounter with the unknown! Think of it as an underwater themed version of what eventually was realized as Verbolten at Busch Gardens Williamsburg and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what was planned and the timelines involved at both parks.
So back to San Diego… what else is planned for 2025 other than a jazzed up Journey To Atlantis? Would you believe… Jellyfish? Yeah… what was supposed to be the big new attractions for 2024 was never built, as the park was focused more on building their new main entrance and now Jewels of the Sea: A Jellyfish Experience has now been confirmed as being a 2025 attraction for the park that will be installed inside of the former Clydesdale barn, not far from Journey to Atlantis. This isn’t the first time a new attraction was planned for the former Clydesdale barn structure, as you may recall the very short lived Submarine Quest ride, which despite the name took riders into the sky on an elevated track around the immediate area, and then encouraged kids to play with touch-screens on-board rather than take in the view. Ummm… yeah… I’m not surprised they let that concept go in conjunction with major flaws with the ride system itself that came up, but since then I think the former barn building has simply sat quiet and forgotten.
(9/29/2023) SeaWorld San Diego is getting a new attraction in 2024 called Jewels of the Sea: The Jellyfish Experience. According to the press release, this new exhibit will be added to the park’s Ocean Explorer area, which is immediately to the right after you enter the park.
“Glowing with an ethereal light, Moon Jellyfish, Pacific Sea Nettles, Upside-Down Jellyfish, and Comb Jellies will gracefully glide through the water, showcasing their hypnotic movements that seem almost unworldly. The experience features an 18-foot-tall cylinder, among the tallest jelly cylinders in the country, and a five-foot diameter sphere jelly habitat with water that pours from the top and sides for guests to touch. Guests can have the perfect photo-opp with a 10-foot-tall acrylic living arch of jellyfish for guests to walk through for views from multiple angles. ”
2026/2027 - Flying Theater - Speculation - (3/20/2025) So what does the future have in store for SeaWorld San Diego? Chances are that the next major attraction to come to SeaWorld San Diego in 2026 or 2027 will be a copy of the Expedition Odyssey flying theater attraction opening this summer at SeaWorld Orlando. Just as in was for the original Wild Arctic simulator attraction, the plan will be to have guests ride the new Flying Theater and then exit and be able to walk through the Wild Arctic animal exhibit.
While in Orlando they are simply just transforming two of the former three simulator bays into new flying theater attractions, the Wild Arctic when it was originally built as Mission: Bermuda Triangle had four simulator bays, along with a pass-through hallway in-between bays 2 and 3, to allow guests who didn’t care to ride a way to still see the exhibit.
Now, you may be wondering how they will be able to do this with the Arctic Rescue coaster now in place, but that shouldn’t be a problem as the installation of Arctic Rescue only took over the left two simulator bays, leaving the right two bays (3 & 4) inactive and guests have been using the pass-through hallway to still access the Wild Arctic animal exhibit ever since they closed the simulators down.
With the right two bays still in place, my guess is that as long as guests enjoy the new Expedition Odyssey flying theater in Orlando, it wont be long before the budget is approved to move forward with a clone for San Diego. After all, the filming, editing and programing for the new attraction will already be complete, so all that needs to be done is to buy and install the new ride hardware from Mack Rides.
???? - Thg Next Roller Coaster - (10/5/2023) Screamscape is hearing that long term planning may have begun to add yet another roller coaster to SeaWorld San Diego. The early rumor is that they may have asked B&M to come up with a layout for a Wing Coaster. Given that the park has a sensitive relationship with the local governing agencies, especially when it comes to building anything with height, I would suspect that if SeaWorld San Diego were to build a B&M Wing Coaster, they would take inspiration from Thunderbirg at Holiday World, which uses a magnetic launch system rather than a lift hill.
Another great possibility, and one that would definitely tie into the California surf culture, would be for the San Diego park to build a copy (or near clone) of the Pipeline Surf Coaster that opened at the Orlando park earlier this year (see video below). This next-gen stand-up coaster is themed like a giant surf board and also uses a magnetic launch to keep the action fast and low when needed. The real surprise is the hidden piston built into every restraint unit that quite literally lifts the riders off their feet for a true Hang 10 moment of airtime at the peak of every hill that is guaranteed to make you squeal with glee.
Stay tuned!
New Attraction Footage -
2023 - Arctic Rescue - (7/3/2023) Screamscape was invited to send a local member of the crew down to give the new Arctic Rescue roller coaster at SeaWorld San Diego a spin. The video below shows off a POV of the coaster in action from the front row and from the back as it passes through three launch zones throughout the journey.
Howl-O-Scream 2023 Review -
(10/4/2023) Screamscape was invited to try out this year’s Howl-O-Scream event and I decided to send in my good friend Andy to check it out. For a little history, back in the day, growing up in San Diego, Andy and I would often frequent all the haunts we could find in town, which included several years of visits to the city’s once famous ‘Scream in the Dark’ haunt, the Haunted Museum and others from years past. They managed to shoot an awesome video for us that captures all the fun of Howl-O-Scream and sent back a quick review as well, so enjoy!
–
SeaWorld opens its doors to sirens and slaughterhouses in 2023's Howl-O-Scream, featuring 5 haunted mazes, multiple vignette areas, spooktacular cocktails, roaming haunts, environmental effects, and dark rides. Contained in the southern section of the park, SeaWorld has concocted a trail of screams and haunts worthy of adults and children alike. Honestly, it takes a brave child to deal with what we had to endure. Some of this is NOT for the faint of heart. SeaWorld claims "nowhere is safe!" - and that is true as actors dressed as monsters can startle you at every turn. That is, unless you don a magic blinking medallion (available for
$15 within the park) to guarantee a spook-free experience.
For those brave souls who wish to venture further, the park provided Five (Count-em!) Five themed mazes of jump scares, curated scenes, animatronic ghouls, sparking chainsaws, and more. Within the various themed encounters careful attention to detail was taken, making sure you were looking in the wrong place so that the live ghouls could get the drop on you.
For the extremely observant- there are no less than TWO hidden speakeasies nestled within the haunts (don't forget the password: "Gauntlet"). Fiendish, yet delicious cocktails were available inside including frighteningly authentic "blood bags" filled with what we hope was a cocktail and not the real thing! Collectable, color-changing skull mugs were also purchasable.
Along the dark, smokey paths between mazes were a motley assortment of various monsters to keep you on your toes. Also speckled throughout your adventure are themed "Vignettes" like mini-musicals to enjoy while eating, drinking or planning your next move:
Dark Coasters! What's scarier than a 14-story vertical drop? The turn after- in pitch blackness! When you can't see it coming, it's even scarier. The park offered three coasters of various fear levels to satisfy guests, Emperor, Arctic Rescue, and Electric Eel. A great way to end your visit to the creepiest seaside spectacle you've ever seen this side of the pacific! We were truly taken to another world that hardly seemed like the park we visited a few months earlier.
|
