SeaWorld San Diego

This guide to SeaWorld San Diego opens with a pointed observation: the stadium is named for a whale who has been dead for more than fifty years, and you are watching a stranger wearing her name. It follows the original Shamu, an orca netted in Puget Sound by whaler Ted Griffin in October 1965 and sold to a park barely a year old, and the six years she spent leaping on cue, splashing front rows and hauling trainers across the pool, before a filmed publicity stunt in April 1971 went wrong. Picture the crowds who once drove across the country just to sit in wet clothes and cheer for her.