Sorry for the double post. So we finally made it out to ride MANTA today! This is a great ride, really fun and a lot more intense than I expected it to be I must admit. My 7 year old, who barely cleared the height, 54", also loved it and wanted to ride it over and over!
The wait time when we were there was only 10 minutes and it was also that way when we left the park a few hours later. They had three trains running and were very efficient at the loading/unloading process. If you are local though I'd get out there and ride it now because this is going to have huge lines come peak season.
The queue is beautiful, great theming and the aquariums are great. I don't think it was the full 300 rays yet but there were certainly a lot of them. They also had a couple sharks and a bunch of other tropical looking fish. Didn't see the octopus yet though. The aquarium side for non-riders is still not open, just a sign saying "aquarium opening soon."
We didn't get to choose where on the train we rode but we ended up in the third seat back. The view was amazing, I honestly didn't notice the other people's feet in front of me, there is a good amount of space between the two rows. Going up the hill is crazy scary, you just look straight down at the ground! The loops are intense too, half the time I didn't know which way was up or what the hell was happening. The water effect is neat but didn't excite me all that much. This ride is a fantastic addition to Sea World and to the parks in Orlando and I have got to applaud Sea World on this one, they have definitely upped the ante on the thrill ride game around here.
Hopefully we're gonna go back this weekend and do it again! The camera is on the fritz so I didn't get any pictures, but honestly I don't know what I could take pictures of that hasn't already been on here and everywhere else anyways.