Breaking: AAA Arizona Pulls the Plug on SeaWorld Ticket Sales

Whale-Shaped Chocolates Sent From PETA in Thanks for Kind Decision

For Immediate Release:
September 18, 2018

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

After hearing from PETA about SeaWorld’s long history of cruelty to animals—including that the orcas held there often die decades short of their natural life expectancy—AAA Arizona has confirmed to PETA that it has stopped selling tickets to the marine mammal park. It joined AAA Washington in cutting ties with SeaWorld after PETA posted a billboard in Phoenix urging AAA to end its promotions of the park—and in thanks, PETA is sending it a box of vegan whale-shaped chocolates.

“PETA is so pleased that AAA Arizona hit the brakes on its ticket sales to SeaWorld, where naturally ocean-dwelling orcas are serving a life sentence in tiny tanks, where they’re denied everything that’s natural and important to them,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Decent companies don’t want their names attached to an operation built on exploiting marine mammals, and now, it’s time that AAA National and other offices follow suit.”

In the wild, orcas travel as far as 140 miles every day with their family pods. But at SeaWorld, they’re confined to concrete tanks, given psychoactive drugs, and housed incompatibly, leading to violent bullying and fighting. The animals often exhibit repetitive, abnormal behavior patterns not seen in nature, including gnawing on the metal bars and concrete sides of their tanks and lying motionless at the water’s surface for hours.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—has long called on SeaWorld to develop seaside sanctuaries for the orcas. Numerous organizations and companies—including the Miami Dolphins, STA Travel, Taco Bell, and JetBlue, Southwest, and United airlines—have ended their affiliations with SeaWorld as the company’s cruelty has come to light, and PETA is now calling on AAA’s national office to do the same.

For more information, please visit SeaWorldOfHurt.com.