SEAWORLD TEXAS
San Antonio, Texas
SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment
---- THE LATEST NEWS ----
(10/5/2024) SeaWorld San Antonio Replacing Sesame Street Bay Of Play for Rescue Jr. Land
(4/8/2024) New Coaster Track Arrives for 2025 Project
Park News -
 2025 - New Family Coaster / Rescue Jr. - (1/1/2025) A collection of photos showing off the state of the 2025 project at SeaWorld San Antonio were just sent in. I’m told that two of the older attractions have been moved over to the Wave Breaker plaza to make room for the new additions. As mentioned before, the parts of the new coaster have been onsite for some time, and we’re hearing that Super Grover’s Box Car Derby coaster has been taken down, but is rumored to have been put into storage somewhere.
I wouldn’t be surprised if United Parks was planning to move it to another park in the chain, or sell it on the used ride market. Since the other Sesame branded parks already have similar kiddie coasters, as well as SeaWorld Orlando, about the only more logical home might be SeaWorld San Diego, which lacks a kiddie coaster, they would just need to remove any Sesame references from the current Box Car Racer theming package.
Not a rumor yet, but not a bad idea if the coaster is still in great shape.
(10/5/2024) SeaWorld San Antonio has confirmed that the park’s former Sesame Street Bay of Play area is now closed and will be transformed into a “SeaWorld Rescue Jr.” themed attraction area. This will include the new Beach Rescue Racer roller coaster from Zierer, the Seabird Swing (wave swinger), and Ocean Quest Express (kiddie train ride) as well as the Tide Pool Tumble water play area.
What isn’t mentioned on the official website is the existing Super Grover’s Box Car Derby coaster (formerly Shamu Express), which was also from Zierer. Since they aren’t mentioning it at all and it takes up a good portion of the land where SeaWorld Rescue Jr. will be located, I would assume that the old coaster is being retired or perhaps moved to another park in the chain.
The official park site also lists the attractions: Elmo’s Dolphin Dive and Big Bird’s Spinning Reef as also being closed at the moment, so as they were not mentioned in the list of Rescue Jr. attractions, I’m also assuming these small flat rides may also be removed or relocated elsewhere.
The one interesting thing that has gone unmentioned is that this move seems to serve as a complete removal of the Sesame Street brand from the park, meanwhile SeaWorld Orlando and the two Busch Gardens parks each have dedicated Sesame Street themed kids areas. The last time we saw this happen was at the San Diego park where that park’s Sesame Street Bay of Play area was also rethemed as a more generic “SeaWorld Rescue Jr.” kids play area in 2023, following the opening of the dedicated Sesame Place San Diego park the year prior in Spring 2022.
At the time, United Parks & Resorts, formerly SeaWorld Entertainment, said they would be exploring further opportunities to take advantage of the valuable Sesame Street branding, which makes me wonder if this is just a temporary retirement of the Sesame branding in the Texas park ahead of a possible future launch of a new dedicated Sesame branded area, or quite possibly, a concept of a third Sesame Place stand-alone park could also be something in the works.
After all, we’re now seeing the Dallas area being expanded with two small mini-parks coming in the next couple years: Peppa Pig Theme Park and Universal Kids Resort. So it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for United Parks & Resorts to look into adding their own dedicated mini kids park in San Antonio. If they did it as something totally different, possibly as a large themed indoor park with some outdoor attractions as well, it could be something that could be quite enjoyable for families with small children to visit all year round, avoiding the summer heat-wave months.
(7/21/2024) Something big is in the works for SeaWorld San Antonio for 2025. According to a local news report the park is working on a 146,000 sqft mystery project said to be worth $6 million for next season. While the project description is now vague, they say that a cached version they found had previously used the project name, “Rescue Jr. 2025”.
Construction is set to begin on August 19th, and if that “Rescue Jr.” name sounds familiar, the San Diego park renovated their old Shamu’s Happy Harbor play area into a Rescue Jr. themed area by adding a splash pad and a couple of flat rides in the process.
Many of the same features of the San Diego park’s Rescue Jr. area are already present in the San Antonio park’s current Sesame Street Bay of Play area, which was also once known as Shamu’s Happy Harbor, so periodic renovations to update the kids area are not uncommon. This is likely yet another planned update to bring the park’s kids area back up to speed with the chain’s current offerings, along with a new junior coaster, though it is interesting to note that this would also remove the Sesame Street characters from the park if they go with the same Rescue Jr. theming as San Diego, but open up the opportunity to build something new with the IP in the near future.
United Parks & Resorts use of the Sesame Street brands has changed in the past few years, with the Orlando park opting to update their own former Shamu’s Happy Harbor area into a full blown Sesame Street Land themed area. Meanwhile the San Diego park opted out of using Sesame, and instead transformed their former Aquatica waterpark into an official Sesame Place theme park in 2022. So how the San Antonio property chooses to move forward with the brand remains to be seen, but they clearly have some options.
(4/7/2024) It appears that SeaWorld San Antonio is planning to add yet another roller coaster for the 2025 season. Guests visiting the park have spotted a growing collection of light blue coaster track and darker blue support pieces stacked up along a backstage road. Various sources have identified the tracks tyle as being a Zierer “Force” line of family coasters. Popular around the world, very few have made their way into North American theme parks, though ironically SeaWorld San Antonio actually already has one of the smaller models that serves as the park’s Super Grover’s Box Car Derby coaster, which was formerly known as the Shamu Express when it first opened in 2004.
One the biggest installation of a Zierer Force style coaster is coming to the UK this season as a pair of racing/shuttle coasters at Legoland Windsor to be called Minifigure Speedway. I’m not saying that Texas is getting a clone by any means, only that the hardware could represent something much bigger and different than what the park already has with the Grover coaster.
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