SeaWorld Privacy Policy
Thank you for visiting our website. SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, Inc. and its affiliates (collectively, "SeaWorld") own and operate this website. This policy tells you how we collect and use your personal information through our online services.
Who Are We?
SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, Inc. and its affiliates operate theme parks and entertainment venues throughout the country. This policy applies to websites for each of our SeaWorld theme parks including SeaWorld Orlando, San Diego, and San Antonio. Our corporate group also consists of Adventure Island®, Aquatica SeaWorld’s Waterpark™, Busch Gardens®, Discovery Cove®, Sesame Place®, and Water Country USA®. This policy applies to websites for various locations of these theme parks, such as Busch Gardens Tampa and Busch Gardens Williamsburg. It also applies to websites in the following categories:
- Websites dedicated to SeaWorld theme park related promotions such as www.seaworldspooktacular.com and www.christmasatseaworld.com.
- Websites for promotions and rides at these parks such as www.verbolten.com.
- Blogs for various theme parks such as www.seaworldparksblog.com and www.buschgardensvablog.com
- Websites dedicated to employment opportunities in our organizations such as www.seaworldauditions.com and www.buschgardensjobs.com.
- Various shopping portals such as www.shamushop.com and www.buschgardensshop.com
- Websites that provide promotions and travel opportunities such as www.seaworlvacations.com and www.clubseaworld.com.
- Websites dedicated to zoological issues, education and conservation such as www.seaworld.org; www.swbg-animals.com; www.swbg-adventurecamps.com and www.swbg-conservationfund.com
- Mobile apps such as the app for Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin® and SeaWorld iPad and Android apps.
- Microsites that provide limited information or tasks for our other sites. This include sites like http://shamuone.com/goshamu/# and http://seaworldparks.com/en/christmastown-tampa
- Finally, our policy applies to special purpose sites such as those that target group sales and hospitality or a special issue such as www.wavesofhonor.com.
This privacy policy explains our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your personal information is collected and used through our websites and apps.
What Information Do We Collect from You?
You may browse many sections of our websites without providing any personal information about yourself. However, if you choose to register for one of our promotions or services, ask us a question through our Contact Us link, apply for employment with us, purchase a park pass, or engage in certain other online activities, we must collect certain information from you.
Registration
To register on any of our sites that provide a registration portal, such as www.wavesofhonor.com, you must complete the registration process by providing personally identifiable information, such as your name, address, email or phone number, as well as information relating to what you would like to receive from us. If you choose to register, you may also be asked to choose a user name and password. Please keep this information secure. When creating an account on one of our Websites or Apps, you are also asked to enter your park pass barcode if you are an annual passport holder. If you choose to register, you have the right to unsubscribe at any time by contacting us through one of the contact options provided below (email, letter, or telephone). Please give us a reasonable amount of time to process your unsubscribe request.
Ordering
If you place an order through our websites or apps, such as an order for a ticket or season pass to one of our theme parks, we must obtain information from you relating to the order, including your contact information, payment information such as credit card number, billing and shipping information, order information, drivers license number, login information, preferences, user information, information about travel companions, and health information. This information is used for billing purposes, to fill and confirm customer orders, and to establish your season pass account which may include information about you that we may need to access should there be an emergency at one of our parks. The information may be used to contact you to confirm orders or in the event that we have trouble processing your order for a pass, newsletter or catalogue. Consistent with applicable laws and requirements, we retain order information to better serve you on future purchases, and may use your information to contact you in connection with other SeaWorld services that we believe may be of interest to you. We also share this information with third party services in order to process your payments.
Employment
If you apply for a job with SeaWorld or its affiliates through our websites, the information collected will include your qualifications for the position, your education, applicable licenses or certifications, prior job history, references, and any other information that you choose to include about yourself. If you are accepted for employment, we will, of course, necessarily collect other relevant information from you and include it with that collected during the application process, and include it in your personnel file. The information that will be collected for purposes of your employment includes your Social Security number. That information and other employee personal information are protected in accordance with SeaWorld’s internal policies.
Newsletter
If you choose to sign-up for our newsletter online or through one of our apps, just submit certain basic information during the registration process. This information may include your name, email address, and a confirmation that you are over 13 years old. This information is used to send the newsletter electronically, and to ensure that we can provide you with appropriate customer service and respond to your inquiries.
Other
Occasionally, we may invite you to participate in a survey or poll such as providing feedback on our website site content, theme parks, services, or products. Your responses will be anonymous unless you choose to provide your contact details so that we can provide you with additional information regarding the survey or poll.
For any information that we collect through our sites, SeaWorld becomes the owner of that data.
We may engage third party services such as OpinionLab to collect feedback from you about your experience on our website. When you click on a feedback link, sometimes called a collection link, you are sharing information with both us and the third party feedback service. This may include your ratings of our website content, specific questions about our parks and services, and your comments and suggestions. You have the option of also including your email address. Such feedback is collected by the third party service and is provided to us for our internal use in analyzing customer use of our website and improving our parks, services and websites. We may also use your email address to contact you if you have a specific question or issue.
We may collect certain information for fraud collection purposes. This includes mobile device identifier, IP address, information about your location, and various settings within your device. We do not associate this information with your name or other such personal information.
Cookies and Other Anonymous Web Tracking Techniques
Like most websites, we use "cookies" on our websites to help us serve you better on future visits, and to help us analyze web traffic for our site, validate sessions, authenticate content of forms you fill out, and evaluate and improve the content or functions of our site. A cookie is a small text file which is sent by a website, accepted by a web browser, and then placed on your hard drive. The information collected from cookies sent by SeaWorld and approved third parties assisting us with our websites lets us know that you visited our sites in the past and helps you avoid having to re-enter information on each visit in order to use some of our products or services. Cookies also help us analyze use of our site, and better aggregate useful information when site users provide feedback about our sites or parks. You can always set your browser to refuse all cookies from this and other websites that you may visit. This will provide you with more control over the acceptance of cookies on your hard drive. However, it is possible that some portions of our websites will not function properly or may perform more slowly if you choose to reject cookies. By using our websites and not disabling cookies, you consent to allowing their use for the described purposes. Remember also that disabling cookies is browser specific. If you log on using Internet Explorer, you must also disable cookies in Safari if you use that browser at a different time. We may also collect information about your method of access such as your operating system (Windows 7, Windows 8, Mac, Linux, etc.) and your browser (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari, etc).
When you visit one of our websites, we may automatically collect certain information from your computer or mobile device, such as the type of computer operating system (e.g., Windows XP or Mac OS), your IP address, the web browser (e.g., Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome and Firefox), UDID (for mobile devices), information about the websites visited before and after visiting our website, the web pages and advertisements viewed and links clicked on within our sites, interactions with e-mail messages sent by our websites or companies (e.g., links clicked on and whether the messages were opened or forwarded), information collected through the use of unique identifiers such as cookie, information regarding the Internet service provider, and other standard server log information.
We may employ over time various different advertising or remarketing services that serve you targeted advertisements to make your online experience more focused to your interests. These services include, but are not limited to, collection of data through the DoubleClick cookie and through our implementation of Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and AdWords. These tools and technologies collect and analyze certain types of information, including cookies, IP addresses, device and software identifiers, referring and exit URLs, onsite behavior and usage information, feature use metrics and statistics, usage and purchase history, MAC Address, mobile unique device ID, and other similar information.
We use the following Google Analytics features:
- Display Advertising
- Remarketing
- Google Display Network Impression Reporting
- Double Click Campaign Manager
- Demographics and Interest Reporting
You may opt-out of these interest-based ads on Google ads using Google's Ads Settings feature. You may also opt-out of other Google Analytics features using the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.
Remarketing allows us to serve you with an advertisement when you visit other websites after having visited one of our websites. This means that websites that are not controlled by us, including Google, will show our ads when you visit their websites. It also means that other advertisers, including Google, will show their advertisements on our website. You may opt-out of remarketing using Ads Settings or at the Network Advertising Initiative's opt-out page.
We will not run interest-based advertising campaigns that collect personally identifiable information (PII) including, but not limited to, email addresses, telephone numbers and credit card numbers. We will not use or associate personally identifiable information with remarketing lists, cookies, data feeds or other anonymous identifiers. We will not use or associate targeting information, such as demographics or location, with any personally identifiable information collected from the ad or its landing page(s).
Social Platform Registrations and Social Media Plugins
Some of the SeaWorld websites permit you to use a third party social networking platform, such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. This includes use of social media plugins such as Facebook “Like”, Tweet, and Pinterest “Pin,” buttons, etc., and links to services such as YouTube and Flickr. When you use these social networking platforms and plugins, your username and password for the services and other information available about you or collected from you on these services may be shared with us. Some plugins allow you to post specific content from our websites. For example, on the Antarctica® website, we use a Reach Buddy plugin to enable you to share your penguin type from the penguin quiz on your Facebook wall. When you take the quiz, a pop up appears that asks you for your Facebook account name and password. Although that information is not collected by SeaWorld, it is collected and used by Facebook for log in purposes through the Reach Buddy app. Please remember that when you enter your Facebook account name and password into social media apps like Reach Buddy (sometimes called sapplets), you are giving the app permission to post to your Facebook wall on your behalf.
When you use social networking platforms and plugins, you share your information with them and their privacy policy applies to the use and disclosure of such information. In addition, they may be able to collect information about you, including your activity on the SeaWorld websites, and they may notify your connections on the social networking platform about your use of the SeaWorld websites. Such services may allow your activity to be monitored across multiple websites for purposes of delivering more targeted advertising. Please note that their privacy policies may apply and we encourage you to read them. We may add new social networking plugins and buttons to our websites from time to time.
Apps
This privacy policy applies to our iPad, iPhone, Android and other mobile device apps such as the app for Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin®, the SeaWorld Parks app, the Busch Gardens app, the Turtle Trek™ app, and the Shark Goes to Doctor app. We may also add additional apps from time to time. Our theme park related apps use GPS data to determine your location to provide you with better information about our parks and locations within our parks.
Our apps also give you the ability to purchase tickets and season passes. Apps that include this feature collect the information listed above under "Ordering" for the purpose of processing your request for a pass. We use a third party service to process your purchase. When you download an app from iTunes, the Google Play Store or another third party service, you are typically sharing contact information, CC information, billing information, login information and device information with that third party service if you are the account holder. This information may be used to facilitate your purchase and download of the app from the third party service and is subject to their privacy policy. This information may also be used to facilitate your purchase of a park pass or product from SeaWorld. However, this information is not collected by SeaWorld or the app itself.
Some of our apps, like the app for Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin®, allow you to create video or other media content and to share it with others through email or social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. When you share your videos with other people, they may share your video with others including your image and anything you say or include in the video. You should consider that any video content you create using our apps may be made public.
Using and Sharing Information Collected
SeaWorld may share your information within the SeaWorld group of companies as well as with third parties that assist us with our websites, advertising, contests and sweepstakes, such as in providing the services that you requested, or for the purposes of improving our marketing or administration. This includes companies that provide analytics to us about use of our website, so that we can evaluate use of our websites and continue to improve our website content.
Our U.S. websites are intended for residents of the U.S. If you happen to live in another country yet use our U.S. websites, any data collected about you with respect to your use of our websites will be transferred to the U.S. As such, please note that there may be different standards that apply to how your data may be used and protected than the standards in place in your country. Nevertheless, SeaWorld has put in place safeguards to ensure that your data is safeguarded and protected irrespective of the country you live in. This includes obtaining written assurances from third parties assisting SeaWorld with its website or given access to your data, which require them to adopt standards that ensure an equivalent level of protection for your data as that adopted by SeaWorld.
Except as provided in this paragraph and below in "Promotions and Third Parties," SeaWorld does not share or sell any personal information that you provide to us through our website for any separate use by any third party. However, from time to time, we may provide aggregate (statistical) information about our customers, sales, online traffic patterns and related information to reputable third parties who help us improve our business and services, but these statistics do not include any personally identifying information.
We also may disclose your information in special cases. For example, when we believe that we must disclose information to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be violating our Terms and Conditions of Use, or may be causing injury to or interference with our rights or property, other website users or customers and their information, or anyone else who may be harmed by such activities. SeaWorld and our service providers may disclose, access or monitor your personal information when we believe in good faith that the law requires it and for administrative and other purposes that we deem necessary to maintain, service and improve our products and services and our information security.
We use mobile device identifier, IP address, information about your location, and various settings within your device for fraud detection purposes. We may use software to check this information against various databases of fraudulent activity. Your use or access to the website may be restricted or terminated based on such information.
In the event that we sell, assign, or transfer all or part of the SeaWorld business, we may transfer your personal information to the buyer. However, the buyer, assignee, or transferee will be required to safeguard your personal information in a manner that is consistent with the requirements in this Privacy Policy.
Custom Audience Targeting
When you subscribe to any SeaWorld email or newsletter list, you expressly give us permission to provide your email address to Facebook for use solely in connection with its Custom Audience Targeting program. Facebook will match your email address to its database and will display advertisements for SeaWorld parks and services on your Facebook portal. If you do not wish to see such targeted advertisements, please unsubscribe from our email or newsletter lists using the instructions on our emails and on our websites.
Promotions and Third Parties
From time to time, SeaWorld may run promotions offering our customers special deals, coupons, discounts, chances to win contests, and other prizes. These promotions may involve third parties. In order to participate in these promotions, SeaWorld may require certain basic information about you, such as your name, email address, physical address, and date of birth. This and other required information may be stored by SeaWorld in order to help us better understand how we can design and market our products for you and others. This information may also be shared with any relevant third-party promotional partners involved in the specific promotion for which you choose to sign-up. In addition, certain third parties may use your information to contact you in order to provide you with more information about their company and with further opportunities to make additional purchases. Please remember that SeaWorld cannot be responsible for the information which you choose to disclose to third parties.
Your California Privacy Rights
California Civil Code Section 1798.83 permits our visitors who are California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please send an email to privacy@SeaWorld.com, or write to us at: SeaWorld headquarters, PO Box 690129, Orlando, FL 32869, ATTN: SeaWorld.com Privacy.
Do Not Track (DNT) is a privacy preference that users can set in their web browsers. While the United States Federal Trade Commission has endorsed DNT, our website does not support DNT codes. However, except in the case of analytics cookies, remarketing and other features of Google Display Advertising described above, our website limits tracking to the internal uses described above. Except in the case of analytics cookies, remarketing and other features of Google Display Advertising described above, our website does not track your use across multiple websites other than the affiliated websites included within this policy, however, other websites to which we link may. Please review their privacy policies to understand how you may be tracked.
Safeguarding Your Information
We follow applicable laws and requirements to protect your information. SeaWorld uses physical, electronic, and administrative safeguards designed to protect your personal information from loss, misuse, alteration, theft, unauthorized access, or unauthorized disclosure. We evaluate these safeguards on an ongoing basis to help minimize risks from new security threats as they become known. However, as is the case with all websites, we unfortunately are not able to guarantee 100% security for data collected through our public websites. We use SSL encryption on payment portals within our websites, however, unless specifically designated on our website, we do not use encryption.
Our Commitment to Children's Privacy
The SeaWorld Kids website and some individual child oriented websites are subject to a separate Terms of Use and Privacy Policy available at http://www.seaworldkids.com/en/termsandconditions/. The SeaWorld websites that link to this Privacy Policy are not intended for use by children under the age of 13. Other than the sites referred to in the SeaWorld Kids Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, SeaWorld does not market any of its products online for children under the age of 13, nor does SeaWorld design its online applications, advertisements and other features to attract an audience of children under the age of 13. Although certain pages within the website may reference "kids," "children," or "students," SeaWorld strictly intends for such portions of the website to be used only by adults (such as parents and teachers) or children of the age 13 or older. SeaWorld adheres to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and does not knowingly register or otherwise collect personally identifiable information from any child under the age of 13 without the prior verifiable consent of the child's parent or guardian. However, we are allowed to collect personal information from a child for the one-time purpose of responding to an inquiry, answering an email, or seeking Verifiable Parental Consent at the request of the child under the age of 13.
SeaWorld does not sell or share information obtained from minors with any third parties for their own use. The third parties who may have access are those assisting us with or co-sponsoring our website fulfillments, such as for purposes of filling orders or processing payments. We do not share a child's information with blogs or other sites where the information would be publically accessible. We may collect limited information for a one time contact, such as verifying your birth date for the Florida Fun Card activation. In such a situation, we do not keep the information nor disclose it or use it for any other purpose.
If SeaWorld should inadvertently collect information from a child under the age of 13, we delete that information, except to the extent needed to seek Verifiable Parental Consent from the minor's parent or legal guardian. When Verifiable Parental Consent is obtained, we collect only that personal information from a minor that is relevant to the registration or purchase. We protect the information with security safeguards and confidentiality measures that are commensurate with the sensitivity of the information. Parents or legal guardians have the right to review their child's personal information, delete it, or withdraw permission to allow further collection or use of that information.
Parental Submission of Personal Information of Children
While SeaWorld does not collect information directly from children, we do allow parents to submit certain limited information about their children on the SeaWorld Parents website at http://www.seaworldkids.com/en/gennature/takeaction/parents/.
SeaWorld allows parents to sign up for email mailing lists that may contain information and activities that are useful for children. Emails subscribed to from the SeaWorld Parents page are sent directly to the parent and it is up to the parent to share with their children. Children may subscribe to emails directly on the SeaWorld Kids websites using the provided link under a limited exception to the verifiable parental consent requirement. This link requires the child to submit both the child's and the parent's email address. We then send an email to the parent who has an opportunity to opt-out of the newsletter for their child.
SeaWorld also allows parents to link to or embed pictures and videos of their children under the age of 13 from social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to SeaWorld. These pictures and videos are collected on the applicable social networking site and are subject to their privacy policies and terms of use. They are posted on various public portions of the SeaWorld websites. When you share photographs and videos of your children with other people, they may share your photographs and video with others including your image and anything you say or include in the video. Photos and videos submitted to a social networking service may be used in the following ways:
- Featured in a slideshow on the website
- Featured in a video on the website
- Shared on social media (Facebook, Instagram or YouTube)
At any time, parents can request that photographs and videos of their children under the age of 13 be deleted from our websites see our Terms of Use under "Parent Request to Remove Videos and Photos of Children." A parent can contact our customer service department either to request a takedown of the photograph or video through the takedown request form in our Terms of Use http://www.seaworldkids.com/en/termsandconditions/.
Parents should allow for a reasonable period of time for a takedown to take effect.
Update, Modify or Correct Your Information
SeaWorld takes reasonable steps to ensure that your personal data is accurate and up-to-date for the purposes for which it was collected. We encourage you to contact us to update or correct your information if it changes or if you believe that any information that we have collected about you is inaccurate. Consistent with legal requirements and limitations, SeaWorld also permits you to obtain a copy of personal information that we hold about you. To do so, please email us at privacy@SeaWorld.com, or write to us at: SeaWorld headquarters, PO Box 690129, Orlando, FL 32869, ATTN: SeaWorld.com.
Please note that we will likely require additional information from you in order to honor the request, such as to ensure proper authentication or to verify the SeaWorld company to which the information was provided.
Right to Unsubscribe
You have the right to unsubscribe from any services that we offer, if you no longer want to participate. To do so, please use our Contact Us link on this site for additional information, or email us at privacy@SeaWorld.com. Please note that if you already have requested products or services when you decide to withdraw consent, it may take a short period of time for us to update your preferences and ensure that we honor your request.
Links to Other Websites
Our websites may contain links to sites operated, controlled, and maintained by independent third parties. We do not control the use of information you may provide to such third parties. If you access other websites using the links provided in our websites, the operators of the third-party sites may collect information from you which will then be used by them in accordance with their own privacy policies, not ours. Those policies may differ from ours. It is your responsibility to familiarize yourself with privacy policies on this website and other websites.
Changes to This Privacy Policy
As we continue to provide additional services and as the privacy laws and regulations evolve, it may be necessary to revise or update this Policy. We encourage you to review this Policy from time to time, as you return to our site, so that you are familiar with any changes. Please note that we use personal information in accordance with the privacy policy that was in effect at the time the information was collected.
Contact Us
If you have any questions, please email us at webmaster@SeaWorld.com or write to us at: SeaWorld Headquarters, PO Box 690129, Orlando, FL 32869, ATTN: SeaWorld.com or call us at: (888) 800-5447.
Updated: November, 2014
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All Rights Reserved.