We arrived at DC around 7.45 this morning.
There's four of us. My parents, me and my boyfriend. Two swimmers and two non-swims.
We got out photos taken for our I.D lanyards and given a time for our swim (8.40)
We headed down into the park and to the restaurant for breakfast.
Breakfast, lunch, snacks and drinks were all you can eat all day. After breakfast we went to get our vests.. We were given a choice between wetsuits and vests and we all chose vests as a member of staff told us if we wore wetsuits and wanted to go to the toilet we'd have to give ourselves half an hour to do so.
Then we were taken to our personal cabana (extra charge) sucluded from the remainder of the park.
We then headed to Starfish Lagoon, where we had to sign a weaver and watch a video before going to swim with dolphins.
We were taken into 4 groups into the pool. There were 9 in our group.. A family of 4, a family of 3, me and my boyfriend. The water was SO cold, but the experience was well worth it.
The dolphin with our group was DCs oldest, Cindy. She's in her 40s. Her friend Jenny was in the group next to us. We were interacting with Cindy, when Jenny left her group, and convinced Cindy to swim off with her. We then switched for a young dolphin named Maria (pronounced in a very odd way)
The experience was amazing, but the swim itself was disapointing. It only lasted about 5 or 7 seconds.
The trainer in our group explained that dolphins flukes (tails) and fins, all have unique patterns, which is the same as us having fingerprints..
At the end, they switched Maria with another dolphin named Lester. He was huge and so pretty :). The trainer sent Lester off to "get a toy to play with" and I was chosen out of the group to retrieve to toy off him when he came back. He came back with a buoy with writing on it. It said 'Happy 21st Birthday Aisling. Love Mam & Dad' :)
I got to keep the bouy and when I got out of the water I was also given a goody bag. It had a tshirt, a frame, a water camera and a voucher for a free video and photo in it.
The bag itself in the shop cost $23, the tshirt $19, the frame $25, the photo $20, the DVD $75 and i dunno what the camera was worth.
We headed back to cabana for awhile and then went to the Aviary where the birds were eating out of our hands and then to the tropical river.. It was so relaxing!!
The stingray lagoon was also cold.. I didn't go far into it, because there was a drop in the ground, and stuff like that makes me nervous, but there was a shallow one right next to that so I did that instead.. Also cold!!
We had a 'Cabana Host'.. She came into our cabana every so often to check on us every so often and bring us whatever we wanted.
We also had a problem squrrial.. He kept sneaking down from a tree into a cabana and at one point stole our cookies.
My mam got me a gorgeous necklace in the shop there. They had them in the shape of each of the dolphins unique fluke shapes, with there names on it. The idea is you get the dolphin who you swam with, which was a bit of a problem consider our dolphin ran away with the other one and we ended up with a few different ones. Lol... I got Lester, because he was my favourite :).. Gingy wasn't too happy that i'm wearing another guys name around my neck lol
Each of the necklaces came with a leaflet with information on that particular dolphin. Unfourtunately, they were out of leaflets for Lester, but I got one for Cindy, and they offered to send me one for Lester when they get them back in.
I wouldn't recommend the DVD, as it is worth more like $10 than $75, but other than that, everything was perfect, and if I'm ever lucky enough to come back to Orlando, Discovery Cove with be top of my 'to do list'