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SeaWorld to Give Lakefront New Look
(Orlando Sentinel) -- SeaWorld Orlando plans to build a waterfront dining and shopping complex in the middle of the park, a signature centerpiece that is part of a strategy to take on SeaWorld's larger competitors. In what the company calls its biggest expansion project, plans call for four shops, a pair of cafeteria-style restaurants -- one with a stage for live shows -- and a two-story bar, built to resemble an old stone fort, around the base of the park's Sky Tower. The plans filed with Orange County's building department on Wednesday didn't disclose the estimated cost of the project. Construction could begin as early as next month, pending approval by the county, with the shops and restaurants opening next summer. During the past two years, SeaWorld has be-come more innovative as it seeks to compete more aggressively with Walt Disney World and Universal Or-lando. It regularly offers Florida residents "Fun Cards," single-day tickets that allow guests to return every day through the rest of the year. It introduced "EZ Pay," which let guests spread the cost of regular annual passes over 12 months. It's the only theme-park operator in the market to let visitors buy tickets online -- at a 10% dis-count -- and print them at home. Disney and Universal sell tickets online but don't allow home printing. It gives passholders the option of renewing their passes by mail. Borrowing a strategy from the credit-card industry, the company recently began sending new passes -- rather than easily ignored renewal notices -- to people whose passes are about to expire. Passholders can activate the cards by calling a toll-free number.
SeaWorld's last major expansion came two years ago with the opening of Kraken, a suspended roller coaster. SeaWorld also opened Discovery Cove, a reservations-only resort where guests get to swim briefly with dol-phins, in 2000. Keith Kasen, SeaWorld's executive vice president and general manager, said the new water-front complex "really will become the heart of SeaWorld." The newest plans call for replacing the nondescript Chicken 'n' Biscuit restaurant with a 660-seat cafeteria-style eatery called Voyagers' Galley, which is designed to resemble an old shipwright's shop. Seafire Landing, a 426-seat cafeteria-style restaurant and theater, will replace Bimini Bay Cafe and SeaWorld's Polynesian Luau. Kasen said the luau will move temporarily to the pavilions behind Atlantis Bayside Stadium on Aug. 21. He wouldn't discuss the show or shows planned for Seafire's stage. Between the restaurants, SeaWorld wants to put four shops in a Customs House and Guild Hall. Drawings submitted with the plans show a vaguely Mediterranean-style building with a tiled roof and stones peeking out from beneath cracked plaster on the exterior walls. SeaWorld plans to build a bar in the shape of a cannonball-damaged stone fort around the base of the 400-foot Sky Tower. It also wants to build a new bridge across the lake to a structure called Breakwater Point. Built to resemble a stone ruin, it will replace a building in the middle of the lake now used as a staging area for the Intensity Water Ski Show.
If the trains are hanging under the track now, Sea World is in trouble...
