Attractions guru Gore: “Before, violence during our live show extravaganzas was a bug. A six-ton, black and white bug. Now it’s a feature!”

“Naturally, we were saddened when we had to report an 80-percent drop in attendance over our third quarter and a $370 million decline in revenue,” says Sea World Director of Attractions Gary Gore. I never thought I’d hate anything more than that damn Blackfish documentary, but it turns out, covid’s even worse. There we were, gently transitioning away from being a watery zoo and toward being an amusement park, and boom, the government decides amusement parks are bad now. So we had to fall back on what had: great big water tanks and the greatest bunch of gung-ho aquatic performers ever assembled. Plus, a marked increase in the number of great white sharks sighted off the coast of San Diego - triple the usual numbers. Turns out, people don’t like swimming with sharks. But what they do like is watching other people swim with sharks, like in Shark Week. And they especially like watching other people blow sharks to smithereens, like in Jaws. And since Universal Studios can’t put people on its Jaws-themed ride, they were happy to partner with us to make our live Jaws Attacks! show a reality. Some folks in corporate were worried about the response when the Soak Zone became the Spatter Space, but my instincts were right: the public loves it.”