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If you live in Central Florida and are considering adopting a pet, then I have a great deal for you. If you adopt from one of three specific shelters, then you can earn two free single-day tickets to Sea World.
The program, dubbed Happy Tails, is a part of the amusement park’s initiative called Sea World Cares. Sea World Cares is the branch of the park that helps rehabilitate and conserve wild animals. Happy Tails, then, focuses on the local land animals in the Central Florida community.
Happy Tails isn’t complicated. If you adopt a pet from one of the three participating shelters in the Orlando area, then you will receive the aforementioned tickets to Sea World. Shelter employees will print out the tickets on site once your adoption is finalized.
The tickets are good for a year after printing, and the Happy Tails program lasts for a limited time only. Perhaps if it’s popular enough Sea World will continue it, though I find that unlikely given that the price of Happy Tails is the loss of admission for the park.
Because of that fact, I’m glad that Sea World is offering the deal at all. I’m not really sure what, exactly, park execs get out of it; good press, perhaps, or maybe some additional revenue as friends or family accompany the free ticket holders to the park?
No matter the reasoning, it’s great that Sea World has added Happy Tails to its list of philanthropic programs. I toyed with dubbing Sea World something other than an amusement park due to the work that it does like this; while ultimately Sea World functions as a large outdoor marine animal aquarium/show, it does valuable work conserving and rehabilitating sea animals.
In fact, Happy Tails is indicative of Sea World’s recent expansion into animal kingdoms beyond the ocean. Both parks in Orlando and San Diego now include popular pet shows, dubbed “Pets Ahoy,” and “Pets Rule,” respectively.
Just like well-known Sea World shows where dolphins and orcas perform tricks for the crowd, in these pet shows dogs and cats come out on stage to show off their trained skills. All of the pets involved in the shows have been officially adopted by Sea World from local shelters.
Not only does Sea World adopt these animals, it makes a point to seek out the problem pets. These animals are the ones with histories of abuse or neglect that often have trouble finding homes, because their traumatic backgrounds make them much harder to train.
Thus not only is Sea World dedicated to helping animals find homes, the park is actively doing so at cost to itself. It adopts animals for its shows that involve a greater time commitment to train, and gives out free tickets to patrons who adopt animals from shelters.
I only wish that this deal applied to shelters across the country, not just a few in Central Florida. I understand the restriction, however, because it would be too difficult to verify and keep track of animal adoptions at random shelters. Sea World’s just doing this at places with which it already has a relationship.
If I lived in the Central Florida area I would definitely take advantage of this deal. I hope it encourages those who were thinking of purchasing pets to adopt instead. For more information, including a list of the participating shelters, go to the Happy Tails program website here.
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*(This image by Stig Nygaard is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
