‘SeaWorld: Where Timeout Never Ends’ Message Appears Around Playgrounds

PETA’s Sidewalk Ads Mark Anniversary of Tilikum’s Death and Tell Kids What Life Is Really Like for Animals at Marine Parks

For Immediate Release:
January 4, 2018

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Sidewalks near Orlando’s busiest parks and playgrounds now sport an eye-catching message from PETA just ahead of the one-year anniversary of the orca Tilikum’s death. The sidewalk ads show a crying child in a tank of water above the words “SeaWorld: Where Timeout Never Ends. Never Visit SeaWorld or Any Marine Park.”

“Kids would run screaming from SeaWorld if they knew how orcas suffered and died in its barren tanks,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s sidewalk decals speak to kids in terms that they can understand.”

After the documentary Blackfish revealed that orcas swim listlessly and break their teeth by gnawing on the bars of SeaWorld’s concrete tanks, the company has faced a public-relations disaster that executives described in recently released internal e-mails as “relentless amateurism,” also writing, “God, we look like idiots.” Since then, its stock, ticket sales, and profits have plummeted, and it’s faced multiple rounds of massive layoffs.

Seven marine mammals died at SeaWorld in 2017 alone. PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—is calling on the company to retire all the surviving marine mammals to coastal sanctuaries, where they’d have some semblance of a natural life.

The ad was conceived of by University of Southern California advertising students.

For more information, please visit SeaWorldOfHurt.com.