Park News - (1/14/14) Apparently the whole Blackfish maelstrom the SeaWorld parks have found themselves in has done nothing to curb the public’s desire to visit the parks. According to the
pre-announced Q4 results, SeaWorld was not only pleased with their performance, but reported that the Orlando and San Diego parks helped them achieve record setting revenue for the year. The full results announcement will be released in March 2014.
Speaking of Blackfish, another former SeaWorld trainer who was actually used in the film itself, Mark Simmons, has now come forward to say that he regrets his association with the film, but that his first reaction upon seeing the final cut absolutely sickened him. According to Mark, “It was masterfully woven with lies and disinformation and just enough truth to convince almost anyone that didn’t know better. Worse, not an ounce of the counterpoints I provided for the film were used. In fact, what Gabriela used made my position appear congruent to that of the film’s claim. I was embarrassed and, to some degree, initially I was angry.”
The complete interview can be read over at
MiceChat and is quite the eye opener, as Mark openly talks about the other people involved in the film, what tales were told to get him to participate and how he wasn’t even allowed access to see the finished film until it was aired on CNN for the world to see. Then he was shocked to find that his 3 hour interview on camera has been trimmed down to almost nothing, altered and his 27 years of experience taken out of context, while Samantha Berg who only has 1 year of time with the whales and absolutely no experience with Tilikum at all, became one of the dominating voices of the finished film. Why? “Because the things I said flew in the face of the movie’s clear agenda. What I contributed did not support Gabriela or Tim Zimmerman’s intent with the film. I worked with Tilikum, cumulatively, much more than all of the other trainers put together.”
According to Simmons, other lies and complete fabrications in the film include:
Dawn’s arm was not swallowed by Tilikum, the story told by Jeff Venture about how he was asked to destroy a video tape of the show, the issue of how baby whales are separated from their mothers and the events leading up to the accident with Dawn.
Please do give the interview a read.