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Overview of the park - First of all, Discovery Cove is a resort experience where you can play on the beach, snorkel a tropical "reef", float on a lazy river, meet birds in the aviary and swim with dolphins (for an extra fee). The park is limited admission so if you are going during a peak time you do want to make reservation. You also have to reserve the dolphin swim. You can split up and some people can swim with the dolphins but you should book these tickets at the same time. The age to swim with the dolphins is 6 years old.
Discovery Cove is also all-inclusive. Your day includes breakfast, lunch, snacks, drinks, wetsuits, towels, lockers, everything. It is important to note that the breakfast is a FULL hot breakfast, not just cereal and bagels. The lunch is also a full hot lunch. The snacks vary from hot pretzels and ice cream to assorted bags of chips. Beverages included the standard soft drink fare along with a good assortment of alcoholic drinks including some super yummy Pina Coladas. Not to mention the standard coffee and tea and the somewhat less standard hot chocolate.
I would recommend arriving as close to park opening as possible. This will give you time to get checked in and eat breakfast before you want to get started with your day. There are lockers located in various areas of the park. I would recommend deciding where you want your "home-base" to be located and getting lockers there. We did end up with 2 sets of lockers on opposite sides of the park but found this to be unnecessary.
Once breakfast is done go get sized for your wetsuits (if needed) and pick up your snorkel and mask. You get to keep the snorkel which made the kids pretty happy!
The Park Layout - The center of the beach area is devoted to the dolphin lagoons. There are three lagoons. The coral reef is to the right of the lagoons and the swimming area and lazy river are to the left, when you are looking at the lagoons. The swimming area is fresh water and it is heated to a very balmy 82 degrees. The reef and the dolphin lagoons are salt water and are kept at 72 degrees, although they may be warmer in the summer. A wetsuit was truly appreciated! The aviary is located behind the swimming area. If you turn your back to the dolphin lagoons, you are facing the buffet building and eating area. There are a couple of gift shopping areas as well.
Dolphin Swim - This experience is a little extra but it is what most people think of with Discovery Cove so I am going to start here. This was easily the best part of the day for me. That said, my 7 year old daughter loved this but it was not her favorite part of the day. Although this experience is super cool, I don't think it is significantly different from other dolphin swim programs out there. Nonetheless, this is super cool! When you check into Discovery Cove with a reservation for the dolphin experience you are given the time and location of your swim. At the designated time you report to the designated hut for an orientation film and the standard release form signing. Note - you are required to remove all jewelry for the swim, they will allow some wedding rings to remain on, I imagine that is for those of you that can no longer remove them! :) Once every one has signed their life away you will get split into smaller groups and head across the beach to your assigned lagoon. Your animal trainer will take you in the water and you get to watch and participate in some training and tricks with a dolphin or two. My hubby was taking LOTS of pictures of this for me and said that it looked kind of dull from the beach but I was not bored for a second! You get the photo ops with the dolphin (kissing, posing and riding), which they will sell you after your swim. There is plenty of time for touching, feeding, and asking questions. This experience makes me wish a little for a do over so I could be a dolphin trainer. Just a little though, as the do-over would have to include junior high *shudder*. You have an option for a deep water ride or a shallow ride. My daughter did the shallow ride. She was the first to go and I think that made her a bit nervous but the staff was very sweet and even allowed me to help get her situated. Her smile was priceless. I chose the deep water ride which was no trouble but a tad chilly. My smile was ridiculous! Seriously, did I forget the cameras? WAY TO CHEESY! It was that much fun! I don't think the deep water ride was any better than the shallow one so if someone isn't comfortable in the deeper water they will not miss out. After everyone had their dolphin time there were some more tricks and touching and then we were done. I loved every minute!
Tropical reef - So above I noted that the dolphin swim was not my 7 year old's favorite part of Discovery Cove. That is because her favorite experience was snorkeling in the tropical reef!. This was also incredibly cool. Basically, they have set up a snorkelable (is that a word??) aquarium. Not only that but the reef is set up so that if your young children are nervous they can see most of the fish by simply standing and putting their faces in the water with a mask on. Let me back up a moment. The "reef" is saltwater and a walk-in from the beach. There are some coral/rock formations right on the sand. As you walk further in there is what we called the "canyon" this is where the topography of the bottom had a gully where it got very deep (15 feet) and there were a lot of different corals in it. It was absolutely possible to walk to the edge of this "canyon" and look over without ever swimming. The reef is teeming with fish and rays, lots and lots of rays and they are big, REALLY big. Good thing they are "tame", I swear they could eat a child, not even a small child, a whole yummy child! Okay, yes, I know rays don't eat people! The fish are an assortment of super colorful ones and big ones. If you swim to the back of the reef there is a glassed off tank of sharks. On one side of this tank you actually feel like you are swimming with the sharks. Pretty neat but it spooked my 5 year old a little who realizes at the tender age of 5 that she is in fact a yummy child! There was also a tank with lionfish. There is a section of the reef that is cordoned off for the SNUBA option but none of our children were old enough and I am not sure that that experience would really be any better than the snorkeling. We all truly enjoyed the snorkeling. Even our niece who was still 2 at the time was able to look in the water and see the fish.
Swimming area & Lazy river - This area was my 5 year old's favorite part. I think part of the reason for this is that she is a scrawny little thing and gets cold really fast! This water was fresh and heated. You do NOT need the wetsuit in this area. The park did a really good job making the whole place look natural. There were rock formations, waterfalls, lots of tropical plants and again zero entry from the beach. The lazy river is VERY lazy. In fact I am not sure you would actually make it all the way through if you really just floated! It is very relaxing and they provide floating noodles to hold onto. The river even passes through the aviary. My girls also enjoyed diving for rocks throughout the float and there were some designs on the bottom (think fossils etc.). This was not my favorite area as my 5 year old who realizes that the shark could eat her forgot that even though she can swim she can not swim for the 30 continuous minutes or more that it was taking us to float the river. Since she really didn't want a tube and much prefered to dive to the bottom of said river to the point of near drowning, it wasn't as lazy as one might hope. Hee hee. I did like thatis was warm though, I also dislike the cold!
Aviary - The last major area of Discovery Cove is the aviary. It is an enclosed area comprised of 3-4 "rooms" I had seen pictures online of this and thought....oh, that is such a promo photo, no one can really get that close to a bird... Yes, yes you can. If you don't like birds, this is not the place for you. These birds are tame. The staff hands out little bowls of food and the birds will eat right out of your hand. They land on the bowl, your hand, arm, head etc. They have NO fear and they know you have food. Psychology 101 conditioning happened here! I actually had on bird land on my lanyard on my chest and go to sleep. She was so darn comfortable she even pooped on me. I WIN! Again all the children could participate and feed these super friendly birds. I would have liked to have spent more time in here but the day was drawing to a close and I drew the short straw for the potty run so I didn't get to walk around as much as I would have liked.
That about sums up the big day at Discovery Cove. I am sure there is more useful information I am forgetting. I will update this post when I think of it!
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