I'll adress the Killer Whale issue first. You have clearly fallen into the trap of believing the sensationalist headlines about SeaWorld, similar to the "horror" headlines that UK media run about Alton Towers. Have you got a marine biology or veterinary science degree? If not, I would trust the staff at SeaWorld who are fully qualified and have ample expertise in the field of animal care and welfare. But you don't just have to take it from SeaWorld's staff, respected organisations like WWF, AZA and the American Humane Association have all expressed support for SeaWorld.
Mistreatment and abuse does not just mean physical acts of cruelty by trainers, but psychological and physical effects of being confined in literally a goldfish bowl. Orca and all cetaceans can travel over 100km per day in the wild, so being enclosed in these small concrete tanks is indeed cruel.
They use echo location in the wild all the time, but when they are in captivity, they are relatively quiet as when they do echo-locate, it literally bounces off the walls and can cause pain and discomfort.
SeaWorld have split families apart by separating young from their mothers and moving them to different parks. In the wild, pods of orcas have very strong family ties and stay together. Yes, the males do go off for periods to reproduce with other pods females (they are intelligent enough to not breed with their immediate family !!), but they do come back. This separation causes pain and anguish to the mother and is cruel.
I have also witnessed with my own eyes at SeaWorld, Orca being held in very small holding tanks for very long periods. These holding tanks are tiny to the point where the Orca cant really do anything. Is this cruelty? In my eyes, yes it is.
I could go on all day with this !!!
SeaWorld and their trainers do care about their cetaceans, but the artificial conditions that they have to live in have a massive effect on their health and mental stability which is very very cruel.
SeaWorld's ride count isn't very high but it isn't supposed to be. This is not ride heaven, rides are not the main focus, this is first and foremost an animal park and to go in with expectations of a massive theme park will only cause dissapointment.
SeaWorld has to move on from living off the name of Orca, so I predict that the ride offerings at their parks will increase (if the parks aren't sold). They have got to start to diversify and moving into installing more rides is what I think will happen. There is a lot of fake news about SeaWorlds attendance, in that BlackFish started it. It didn't, it was in decline before that, check out the attendance figures from 10 years ago to today. It was declining when the parks didn't install new rides, as soon as they installed a coaster, the attendance rose, before declining again.
Personally, I am torn with regards to SeaWorld. If it hadn't been for a captive Orca, my wife would probably have never developed a deep love for them, which eventually saw her study Marine Biology and now sees her conduct Whale and dolphin surveys to study the numbers of animals in certain areas. However, from a very young age, she knew it was wrong to keep cetaceans in captivity and she still does to this day and she is very vocal with regards to it and I agree with her. They are ambassadors, but its not fair to them to keep them in the conditions they are.
The below image shows why Orca (and other cetaceans), should not be in captivity. This is not SeaWorld, I hasten to add, but is Lolitta at Miami Seaquarium. Is it really fair for an animal which swims many miles each day in the wild to be held in a goldfish bowl like this? This is literally all the space that Lolitta has....
Sorry for the long post, but cetaceans are very important in my life now, due to learning this from my wife. Would I go to SeaWorld again? No, I would much rather spend time in the wild looking at them through binoculars or on a non evasive whale watching boat.
