Autism 
6 Comments Full and Final Update on Sea Life Situation
First, I had a great showing of support from the people who read my blog and my friends on this situation and I’m so grateful for all of the supportive comments and help with this. Thank you.
I did receive a response from Sea Life about the incident that happened and their lack of response to what happened. I heard from both their general manager and their head of operations. They were both apologetic about the incident and the lack of response that I received which I appreciate.
Most importantly I think we reminded them how their employees need to treat families who have special needs individuals. They said “Rest assured, we have addressed the matter with the individual in question as well as all of the staff and members of management.” and “Please know we are taking this very seriously and are doing our due diligence to educate and retrain our staff.”
I totally see this as a victory for special needs families and I have no doubt their management and staff will take the treatment of special needs patrons a little more seriously now.
Sea Life graciously offered my family a discounted rate and private tour of their facility. While I very much appreciate this gesture we won’t be taking them up on it, our goal wasn’t to get something for nothing. Our goal was to make them aware of this situation and help make their employees aware about how to treat special needs customers and I’m hoping that goal was achieved.
I’m sure we’ll be back to Sea Life at some point in the not too distant future and Adrian really wants to go to LegoLand Discovery Center so hopefully these future trips will be less dramatic than the first trip.
Joy, I have to ask, how did Adrian handle Legoland? I took my cousins a few months ago and the place ended up extremely crowded. In the end, I was totally disappointed with the set up (except the movie) but my cousins loved the place. How do your children respond to huge, loud crowds? Sorry I’m nosy but I’m curious. When we went to Legoland there were daycare groups and it just seemed chaotic and even made me very uncomfortable.
I still haven’t been to Sea Life because I had heard it wasn’t worth the money. What was your opinion of the establishment outside of the disrespectful employee?
We haven’t been to Legoland yet, we just tried Sea Life and were going to come back another day for Legoland. Adrian is definitely excited about the idea of Legoland though!
The day we went to Sea Life it was very crowded, the crowds don’t seem to bother my kids. I think they bothered me more than the kids! If they start to get antsy in crowds I wouldn’t go on a Saturday afternoon like we did because it can get crowded, loud, and busy.
As far as Sea Life…honestly I think it is a bit overpriced. Especially if you have lots of kids like we do. We had a coupon for $3 off per person from a coupon book I bought from Adrian’s school fundraising thing. So anyway, that saved us a little bit. It only takes about an hour to go through the whole thing. It is neat though and the exhibits are nice and low so the kids can see the animals well.
All in all I think we’ll do it again but it’s not worth it more than once every year or two. I was thinking about buying the annual pass until we actually went through and realized it’s not something we’d want to do more than once a year or so.
I felt Legoland was seriously overpriced. You walk in and it seems awesome. The first few exhibits are in individual rooms. Then you go down an elevator and there is another exhibit (ride). After the ride its one big room full of legos and off to the side is a indoor play area that you let your kids in and then you have to ask the adult to let them out. (This makes me antsy because anyone can claim their the parent.) I was expecting indivual rooms for the stations and a bit of organization. Not even close. One big open room and getting to the stations can be very difficult. I thought that if things would have been set up differently they could have had great learning tools. A race track could teach physics. A earthquake station could teach about earthquakes and etc. The 5D movie was by far the best part and closely followed by an exhibit off to the side that had different Kansas City Landmarks made of Legos. On a scale of one to five, I would give it a two. Lack of organization is a killer for me. And feeling as though a kid could be kidnapped without notice makes me antsy. Two adults, five kids. I just wasn’t comfortable with it.
But still take Adrian. The kids loved the place. As an adult, I just see the flaws.
I am always nervous about losing sight of my kids when we go in busy places/play places. I’m sure I will be complete nervous wreck but since he really wants to go we’ll probably try it at least once.
Sea Life has a little play area at the very end. We didn’t let the kids play because it was a mad house and couldn’t imagine letting them run around. I wouldn’t be able to keep track of them all!
This a late comment, but I just came across your website. I can relate to your feelings. My grandson Ian who is autistic was scared of dogs for a while (he is better now with some anxiety medication)and refused to go into most places because he thought there might be dogs inside. Once when his mother managed to get him come into the grocery store a dog showed up when they were waiting in the checkout line. Naturally Ian had a meltdown and she had to drop everything and take him out to the car and leave him there while she went in and finished her checkout. Her comment to the lady with the dog: “Don’t you think there is something wrong that my son is sitting in the car and your dog is in here?”
I also have son with autism…sometimes I feel angry about my life but I know that God have something good for my family in the future