Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin

This ride is cold, the further and further u go into the ride the colder and colder it gets. The ride it self is actually pretty fun. Your riding in a mini hover craft. It’s very smooth. They offer mild or wild version of this ride. Wild is not very wild and rather fun and slow. At the end of this ride you get dropped off at the penguin habitat. They are everywhere, it’s snowing in inside. You can get so close to them, you could reach out and pet one. You can see them swimming. It’s really cool place. Keep in mind, this place smells. Every inch of it smells like bird poop.

Visited right when the ride opened for the day, so I didn’t have to wait at all, which was a plus (later, wait times got to be 1+ hour).
It IS cold inside, so I’d advise a light sweater. It’s a cute ride, starting off with a short video about a penguin and you sit in a circular vehicle (that spins if you opt for the «Wild» experience — I’d suggest against it. It’s pretty lame and isn’t even exhilarating.) that follows the penguin’s journey.
The stages you visit are limited, but it is SO pretty and just a feast for little kids’ eyes. They really took time to make the lighting and decoration work for this ride, so I’d give it a whirl if you get the chance to!
After the ride, you can see some live penguins, which is always adorable.

Greatest experience of my life. I LOVE penguins& my boyfriend made sure i got to see this attraction. The lines were loong but fortunately we had express wrist bands so we got through right away, however for those who had to wait… Im sure they can validate that it was def worth the wait. The mini ride was soo fun and the animation was so cutesy. When we got to see the actual penguins, i was sooo excited!!! It was amazing. We got to see the penguins swimming, eating & in their natural state. A lot of the penguins would come up to you & wave. Everyone was complaining about it being super cold, but obvi its going to be cold hence penguins live in cold temperatures, suck it up & take in the penguin cuteness overload like i did.

feeling Too sassy and stubborn for my own good!
Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin is a cool ride/​experience!
one of the newest and most popular ride in sea world… Antarctica!
Antarctica ride has longest queues and freezing when you get to penguins… like extremely cold! Ride is good but not worth waiting in line for two hours… perfect for all ages!

This seems to be one of the most popular experiences at Sea World. During peek times the lines are long, hour plus. If I had to wait that long my review may be downgraded, but we have hit it at the right days I guess. The ride is okay, the kids will like it. But you come here for the Penguins and that is AWESOME and worth it.
On a short visit to the park with just a few hours my son and I hit this up as he liked it like year and could not remember the whole thing. Park was not busy on a Monday after Spring Break. So less than 20 minutes we were in.
A short movie is played about a Penguin. You come to a fork when you need to decide «Wild» or «Mild» If you get motion sickness you need to opt for «Mild» We did the «Wild» which means your car will be spinning around through the ride portion uncontrollably. They then stuff you in a small room where you watch a short movie about a baby Penguin.
When the doors open your car is waiting. I think it held six, but could be eight. What came rushing back from last year was the skanky smell of Penguin poop, you must experience that! The ride on the «Wild» side was fun, large video of a Penguin, this is seeming repetitive I know… PENGUINS!!! Well is is Antarctica. The car really spins, so if you have a camera phone and your taking pics you better hold onto it.
After the ride you disembark to see the REAL Penguins and get even more skanky smell of Penguin poop. Three areas here to view the animals and don’t think for a second that they will hide from you, hell there are millions of them with in what seems an arms length. That of course is where the 4 stars comes in.
It is very cool to view these creatures that close up. Take your pics and move out because it is frigid in Antarctica. A recommendation for those that chill easy and want to hang out a while is to bring a jacket… seriously you will freeze your butt off. There is another area to see them in the water after you exit. I enjoyed this just as much as they buzzed pass you in herds.
This is a must see attraction and even though it is smelly and cold the kids… well adults too will enjoy.

This is a good ride for kids and people who can’t handle more thrilling rides. It’s cute, I guess. Kids will likely enjoy the video while they ride. The live penguin exhibit after the ride is nice. We were here for a special passholder event, so I’m not sure if it’s worth the wait in line.

This ride is fun for the whole family. If you are looking for the biggest thrill ride in Orlando, then Antarctica is not the ride for you.
if you are looking for a ride that mom, dad, the kids can all ride on together and enjoy together, Antarctica is the perfect ride.
I have taken my nieces and nephews on this ride and they love it! With the great story line of Puck hatching to watching him grow and thrive, it is a thrilling and fun family ride.
The ride ends with a beautiful reveal of the penguins in their habitat and then you exit into their habitat with no glass separating you from the penguins.
It is amazing and fun!

Let me start by stating that this ride is a terrible disappointment. Voicing my opinion to friends helped me realize that I was not looking at it necessarily in the correct light.
As an overall attraction, this is a rather pretty one. The lighting is great (it is especially awesome at night) and the new penguin exhibit is really impressive (and really the only thing holding this rating as high as a 3). Unfortunately that is about it.
What we need to remember, I feel, is that the penguin exhibit at Seaworld used to be a moving platform and, as was mentioned to me, that we should look at it more as a fancy way of being taken to the exhibit. The flaw in this thinking is that before you could choose to take the moving method or simply walk in and now the only way to see the penguins are to wait in the line which is not uncommon to be around an hour wait during the day… If it isn’t broken down for an extended period of time which is another common occurrence.
As mentioned before Seaworld has a problem with their rides that are not coasters — they start off promising and leave you feeling like they did not meet expectations. My biggest disappointments here: the «wild» option is still very tame, you enter a grand total of 3 areas (not including the load and exit) and these areas are really lacking in visuals besides lighting, and it is a very short ride experience that the group setting, while relevant to the theme, hurts. When using video projection to take on your POV it does not work when you are not immersed in the video but instead sharing a screen with 4 other ride vehicles in an obviously open setting.
The area itself is gorgeous, and at night it takes an even more awesome appearance. Had they put as much effort in the ride itself I do feel it would have been the ride to put Seaworld back on the map as a contender on the mechanical amusements segment. Unfortunately this was not the case.
I truly hope they realize this and change because I enjoy the park overall and want to see it succeed. Seaworld, feel free to contact me if you need some ideas. Just figured I’d throw that out there.

Love it! The line can be a bit long as it is a new section of the park, but by the time you get through the ride you will be happy to get back in to the warm Florida sun because it is FREEZING in there with the Penguins… A wise personae would bring a light jacket so they could stay in there a little longer with the Penguins, but other park guests might look at you funny when they see you carrying a jacket when it’s 100 degrees out in the Florida sun.

The line for this place is always so long and honestly it’s because it is totally worth it. Ya you have to go on the ride to see the penguins but it’s not that bad of a ride. I you get motion sickness than your probably best taking the mild choice rather than the wild choice. I think it’s so cool to be in the penguin environment and see them up close. Also the two story diving pool for the penguins is such a treat to watch them swim from. Ya it might smell like fish and poop but what do you expect, this is the real world, not tv, and it’s just so great to see them so close.

5 star exhibit 1 star «ride». This continues SeaWorlds new tradition of using short, generally terrible rides to control lines at its exhibits. Amazing open penguin exhibit though.

I’d give this ride/​attraction a 3-​star rating, but honestly the hype was NOT worth what the attraction is.
First off, you need to wait in a horrendously long line outside that has NO fans or way of keeping people waiting cool. It’s summer and waiting 1 – 2 hours with no real air movement is a oversight that will send people into heat stroke! Once you do get inside, you’re forced to watch a short movie, then wait in yet another room to get on the ride. The ride does nothing more than move you slowly through 3 – 4 rooms of fake ice and snow. It lasts perhaps 3 minutes and dumps you off right at the penguins. Now, the penguins are awesome. You’re right up next to them and honestly you can reach in and touch them if you want to (and are stupid and uncaring enough to. A guy next to us tried to and my friend slapped his hand away. We were happy he was stopped.) The problem is that there’s about 3 main areas to watch the penguins, and probably 20 – 30 people can stand in each area comfortably to watch them. So, with new people arriving all the time and maybe room for 90 – 100 comfortably to watch the penguins in a sub-​freezing temperature, you’re not going to want to stay too long. My party lasted about 10 minutes and then we were done.
The exhibit is neat, yes. The wait and the design of the «ride» (it’s really just a stall tactic) is quite possibly disastrous.
Don’t wait more than 30 minutes for this. Poor design, and tight quarters.

The wait is over for the new attraction has opened. We’re annual pass holders and decided to wait till the lines died down some before trying to experience it. We arrived to the park today with just this one adventure awaiting us. Walking up to the new land it’s nice what they’ve done with the old pavilion that was there and have really transformed it. The standby line was 120 minutes even five hours after park opened. Thank goodness we had one time front of line passes as annual pass holders but we felt bad for those having to wait as they had no air flow or fans when near the building. Entering you’re met with a short video to lay the foundation for the story, after that you decide between a wild or mild experience. We choose to venture in with the wild side. After a wait to board we were on our way but after a few spins that we’re very dramatic and stopping to see some video it was over. Less than a few minutes and the ride portion for those having waited for hours was over. You now find yourself in a thirty degree climate hanging out with the penguins. You can get splashed as near the water them and we did end up leaving wet which was great. After some photos here the next stop was a window where we could watch them swim which was interesting. And that was it. What we found to be discouraging is there’s no way to just see the penguins as with the previous availability of viewing them. To see the penguins you are required to wait in the long attraction lines. I gave it three stars because I wasn’t really impressed with the ride and would like a means of seeing the penguins without having to ride the attraction or wait in the long lines as is the case with most all the other animals they have to view. After trying it out we agreed we’d never wait more than 15 minutes for this attraction so will see if we can check it out again during non-​peak days.