One of the best-marketed attractions in California, SeaWorld is a main draw for many visitors coming to San Diego and celebrates its 40th year of operation in 2004. With each passing year the educational pretext increasingly takes a back seat to slick shows and rides, but the 165-acre aquatic theme park--owned by the Anheuser-Busch Corporation--is perhaps the country's premiere showplace for marine life, made politically correct with a nominally informative atmosphere. At its heart, SeaWorld is a shoreside family entertainment center where the performers are dolphins, otters, sea lions, walruses, and seals. The 20- to 30-minute shows run several times each throughout the day, while visitors can rotate through the various open-air amphitheaters.

Several successive 4-ton black-and-white killer whales have functioned as the park's mascot, and the Shamu Adventure is SeaWorld's most popular show. Performed in a 5,500-seat stadium, the stage is a 7-million-gallon pool lined with plexiglass walls that offer magnified views of the huge performers. But you won't want to sit in the seats down front--a highlight of the act is multiple drenchings in the first 12 or so rows of spectators. The slapstick Sea Lion and Otter Show, the fast-paced Dolphin Show, and the Pet's Playhouse are other performing animal routines, all in huge venues seating more than 1,000 guests. In 2003, a "4-D" movie, R.L. Stine's Haunted Lighthouse, opened starring Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, and a roster of multisensory effects. There is also a small collection of rides, including Shipwreck Rapids, a wet adventure ride on raftlike inner tubes through caverns, waterfalls, and wild rivers, and Wild Arctic, a motion simulator helicopter trip to the frozen north.

Guests disembarking Wild Arctic (or those using the ride bypass) find themselves in the midst of one of SeaWorld's real specialties: carefully simulated marine environments. In this case it's an arctic research station, surrounded by beluga whales and polar bears. Other animal environments worth seeing are Manatee Rescue, Shark Encounter, and the Penguin Encounter. The 2-acre hands-on area called Shamu's Happy Harbor encourages kids to handle things--and features everything from a pretend pirate ship, with plenty of netted towers, to tube crawls, slides, and chances to get wet.

The Dolphin Interaction Program creates an opportunity for people to meet bottlenose dolphins. Although the program stops short of allowing you to swim with the dolphins, it does offer the opportunity to wade waist-deep, and plenty of time to stroke the mammals and to try giving training commands. This 1-hour program includes some classroom time before you wriggle into a wet suit and climb into the water for 20 minutes with the dolphins. It costs $140 per person (not including park admission); participants must be age 6 or older. One step further is the Trainer for a Day program, which is a 7-hour work shift with an animal trainer. Food preparation, feeding, a training session with a dolphin, and lunch is included; the price is $395 per person. This program is limited to three participants daily, and the minimum age is 13. Advance reservations are required for both programs (tel. 877/436-5746).

Although SeaWorld is best known as the home to pirouetting dolphins and fluke flinging killer whales, the facility also plays a role in rescuing and rehabilitating beached animals found along the West Coast--including more than 200 seals, sea lions, marine birds, and dolphins in an average year, more than 65% of which are rehabilitated and returned to the wild.