I was sent this map without a source but I thought it was impressive nonetheless. It shows the SeaWorld parking lot in yellow. The green dot is where Orcas spend their lives.
edit: This is Seaworld San Diego, California
To be fair, if you put the Orcas in the parking lot they’d die
Go back to sleep, dad, you need your naptime. ;-)
My dad always called it beauty rest
That’s for Orcars.
It’s awful how they keep them in captivity.
For anyone who hasn’t seen it, I recommend watching the Blackfish documentary.
I have strong feelings about the animals in the Sea World exhibits, particularly the Orcas and Dolphins. However, I contracted for Sea World Orlando for 5 years as an entertainer and often had to be “back-stage” or “back-area.” I watched Blackfish and it did NOT represent the experience that I, or any other team member I worked/talked with had. It felt very sensationalist and not grounded in reality (or at least, the reality I witnessed for 5 years). If you watch it, I’d just approach it with some scrutiny, because it really didn’t come off as a “documentary” to me.
Blackfish is the animal version of Supersize Me. While it genuinely does a good job showing the conditions and plausibility of the topic, it does it at such a sensationalized and over complicated fashion it takes everything away from the message.
Haven’t seen it, but that sounds about right
Like “Drive to Survive” for animal care, if I understand it correctly?
I’m unfamiliar with Drive to Survive
And do you think they represent Orcas realistically?
Blackfish or Sea World in general?
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Jesus. The SeaWorld parks in San Antonio and Orlando have a much better parking lot to park area ratio (though still fuck em for the animal abuse)
That’s still insane. This is Hagenbeck zoo in Hamburg. The green area is a parking garage and a small parking lot dedicated to the zoo. Everyone else just comes with the subway.
The yellow line in the meme is selecting quite a bit of area that isn’t SeaWorld parking, and it’s quite old too. On right it’s selecting some park area and the lot for a boat launch. On the left there is admin buildings and a Marina + parking for that. Check the satellite view.
Not that it matters too much to the point they are trying to make, but they didn’t highlight the entire orca area either. So an over representation for the parking lot and under for the actual exhibit surface area.
Here’s something I don’t understand about these county-devouring parking lots: why are they all one level? Is it more than twice as expensive to build and maintain even a two-level parking structure and save half the footprint?
One thing America has in abundance is land.
The other thing is greed.
So if you’re ever asking " is this option really cheaper?" The answer is that they went with the cheap option.
ROI on even a 2 story parking lot is a lot longer than the one and much more expensive than double the price.
Paving is cheap, easy and other than drainage design is pretty straightforward. Put in drainage, grade land, put down bedding material for the asphalt, put down asphalt and curbing, paint line install signs.
A multi-story garage needs a ton of engineering, concrete and rebar and is custom to each location. Because you have a lot of weight in these structures
If you look at amusement parks that have parking garages most of them are land locked or purchasing new land for parking is so expensive it’s cheaper to build a garage
(Please note I’m am a layman about construction, there is probably a construction person or engineer that can explain it better just a theme park fan that likes reading about how the engineer rides and have occasional tumbled over into parking engineering which is a fascinating topic of how much engineering goes into it)
I used to work as a drafter at a precast concrete company. We mostly built parking garages.
You’re basically correct, paving for a parking lot is cheaper than building a multi story parking garage. A three level parking garage could cost about $20,000,000. And you still have to do the paving on the ground level. The parking garage needs engineering from licensed P.E.'s, hundreds and hundreds of yards of concrete, tons of rebar bent just so and placed just so, thousands of feet of high-strength steel cable, multiple trucks running from our plant to the site over and over to move the parts, then welders, crane operators, grouters, cleanup crew, finishers…
As opposed to just packing the dirt down, pushing some gravel over it, a bit of rebar and an on-site concrete pour.
From your last sentence, does that mean you still need rebar in a regular parking lot?
For concrete, yes. Asphalt, no. But concrete floors don’t need bent rebar, you just lay out the sticks in a grid and pour over it.
It is more expensive to build multilevel parking but its how the laws work. It might even be that the law required this much parking based on statistical models, which is insane if people are getting there some other way.
Imo we could reduce the size of parking lots by just requiring nearby businesses to allow unrestricted parking during their off hours.
Yes, a lot of the time it is, depending on land acquisition cost. Plus you then have some amount of additional ongoing maintenance cost for the structure which is also more than just that of a surface lot.
I think sea world is old enough where the land was cheap enough.
Parking structures are something like 5-8 times more expensive per spot.
Cars constantly emit toxic fumes whenever they’re running. If you try to enclose a parking lot you need some extremely expensive and power-intensive ventilation. Maybe that’ll change as electric cars become more common.
Multi level car lots without walls are a common thing in San Diego.
Bro’s never seen a parking deck.
Just don’t build walls.
I refuse to ever visit a Seaworld/life/wtf because of this… it’s insulting.
There’s also no good bus route to sea world
It’s not for poors
Are you kidding? The parking fee is an astronomical part of entry fees.
Crazy thing is that 15 min away are beaches where dolphins and seals will swim with you for free. I have seen 100s of dolphins and babies. One almost jumped on me by accident.
“Accident”
Don’t forget how rapey dolphins are
Is there a bus from parking to the entrance tho? Or you have to walk there like some ant? /s
No, you just go by car!
When I went to Disney World in Japan, there was a train stop that leads right to it. That’s the way to handle it (not drive to a pointless monorail)
Just another little reminder that if there is a God somewhere out there, they’re certainly not just.
And why I root for the orca when they sink people’s boats.
Its actually worse than you think. The city of san diego owns sea world’s parking lot because of the original contract. The city sets the base price, and then the corp effectively doubles it cuz ofc they do. That’s also why the parking lot is allowed to be so large but the park itself never expands. The city will pretty much always let sea world lease the land for cheap knowing they ultimately get to fix what their guaranteed returns would be. Corporate greed is extremely strong with combined with local government.
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Well, “Aqua World” sounds better than “Concrete World”
I know what this thumbnail is but I won’t view it at 100% because it makes me depressed. Why are humans like this.
This is why they maul people
And I bet that parking isn’t even free.
It would be good PR either way.
