November 19, 2016
I have been wanting to visit Weeki Wachee since I was a child! The idea of seeing real live mermaids has always been intriguing to me. Even seeing some of the stories on TV made me excited to see them! Funny how life can change in just a moment and how TV really can distort reality.
I know that words can have a positive or negative effect on people’s decisions; I will try and choose mine carefully! When we arrived we were greeted with a very warm smile and the bad news that we missed the sirens (the original mermaids). They were there for one show and we missed them by about 30 minutes, Bummer!
We made our way made our way around the park, looking at peacocks and taking pictures of mermaids hiding in the bushes and landscape. We made it to the reptile show right on time to see a very interesting woman tell us all about some reptiles in Florida. Again, this made us continue to question if we were indeed in another dimension or if life really was just that strange! Even the audience was odd, asking questions that just had to have been staged.
We made our way to the Mermaid theater. I believe they wanted the guest to always know what it felt like to be there for the first time because I think everything is exactly the same as it was on opening day! We were slightly alarmed when we arrived and they had on black and white shows but I was just thinking maybe there were paying their respects to the sirens. The announcements came over the speaker and the show was introduced, The Little Mermaid! When the curtains lifted my mind was blown! Take that statement anyway you would like. It probably took me about 10 minutes to compute what I was seeing but I did realize something pretty quickly, these are NOT real mermaids.
In an order to save the people around me from my reaction to what was going on I finally looked at my friend and told her I was ready to leave when she was. We needed to take some pictures to document that this was indeed happening, we got up quietly, not making eye contact with anyone and left the show. All of my mermaid dreams gone! Just like that!
In order to recover from the shock of the show we decided to finish out the day with a boat tour. The first mate was just a strange bird but very fitting for the park and the ride was beautiful and peaceful. I will say the Captain really knows how to maneuver that boat. She was pretty amazing. When we got to the dock we sat there, letting everyone else get off the boat. It was in that moment I knew we had indeed transported in time! The only resolution was to get in the time machine and try and transport back.
Please note: I did not think mermaids were actually real, I was just sharing how unreal these mermaids were to me.
