Several SeaWorld employees wept as the photo montage set to music was shown.
"It was very moving," said Molly Geislinger, 33, who came from Minneapolis with her husband and 21-month-old child.
However, she noticed a difference in how the trainers acted.
"They looked like they were being very careful," she said. "They looked very cautious today."
Indeed, the trainers weren't allowed in the water, meaning the whales' handlers did not surf on top of the marine mammals or fly into the air. Instead, the trainers — wearing orca-like black-and-white wetsuits — directed the whales from outside the huge tank's acrylic walls. They coached the creatures to splash the front-and-center rows a few times, much to the delight of onlookers.
SeaWorld officials have said trainers won't swim with the orcas until they finish reviewing what happened to Brancheau.
Jeff Steward, who came to the show with his wife, called the memorial "a very emotional start."
He said they enjoyed the show, adding: "It's a tragedy, but these things happen when you're dealing with wild animals."
SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment President Jim Atchison said Friday that Tilikum will remain an "active, contributing member of the team," in part because the killer whale show is big business at SeaWorld. The company owns more killer whales than anyone else in the world and builds the orca image into its multimillion-dollar brand. Tilikum did not perform Saturday.
The timing of the killer whales' return to performances reflects just what the sleek black-and-white mammals mean to SeaWorld, which the private equity firm The Blackstone Group bought last fall for around $2.7 billion from Anheuser-Busch InBev in a deal that included two Busch Gardens theme parks and several other attractions.
No animal is more valuable to the Orlando operation than Tilikum, the largest orca in captivity. Captured nearly 30 years ago off Iceland, Tilikum has grown into the alpha male of captive killer whales, his value as a stud impossible to pin down. He now has been involved in the deaths of two trainers and requires a special set of handling rules, which Atchison wouldn't specify.
There are two other SeaWorld parks — one in San Antonio, and one in San Diego.
The San Diego park faced similar scrutiny over its whale show in 2006, when a trainer was bit and held underwater several times by a 7,000-pound killer whale, Kasatka, during a show. He escaped with a broken foot and was hospitalized for three days.
Inspectors from the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health issued a report on that accident saying that "swimming with captive orcas is inherently dangerous and if someone hasn't been killed already it is only a matter of time ... "
The report's findings were disputed by Sea World officials. The state agency apologized and said its investigation required expertise that it does not have. It promised to "thoroughly review" its own account of the attack.
John Galloway, of Palm Coast, Fla., said he didn't want to see the killer whale shows end because of the Orlando tragedy.
"I think they know what they're doing," he said of the trainers. "Me, myself, I wouldn't be down there doing that."
