Swimming First Class

For our first vacation activity, Bob and I decided to splurge on a day at Discovery Cove. We've never been before. I had, however, seen the park at night for a corporate event and knew it was lovely. The reviews of the place are so overwhelimingly great. But it does cost ALOT. Since we're not planning on spending the usual amount this trip on other theme park tickets, we had it in our budget to spend the nearly $800 admission fee for ONE DAY.

Included in that fee (in their defense) is, well, everything. Parking (which most parks charge $10-15 for), all your supplies (towels, lockers, snorkels, masks, vests) and all your food. Plus, and this is the real value, 14 days of consecutive admission to another affiliated theme park such as Busch Gardens or Sea World. Since our condo is about 2 miles from Sea World, that was our choice. It will make popping in and out of the park a great option for us over the next two weeks.

And of course, the big draw is the fact that you get to swim with dolphins. For this trip, the boys got to indulge in a little Aqua Man imitation with a 700lb animal named Capricorn. Palmer and I got to watch and it looked really fun! (Apologies for the "pictures of pictures" but we opted not to spend $170 to get our photo DVD and "only" spent $70 for 7 pictures which I had to photograph for you here.)





Connor says that the dolphin swim was very fun and his dolphin was extremely fast. He also got "nipped" by the dolphin because Connor did something to annoy him. We figure, why should the dolphin be any different than the rest of us? (Connor is reading this over my shoulder right now and is very angry and says it was all Capricorn's fault.)

As for Palmer and I, our day was very nice. I was concerned that we'd be able to make it through the whole day in the heat, and had wanted to book a cabana but none were available when we called. However, we got lucky and there were cancellations--so we upped the ante on the one day splurge and paid even more for private cabana for the day. The cabana came with a stocked fridge and a butler. Nice!




When we couldn't take the heat anymore, we wandered across the sand to a lovely grotto where it was shady and we took a dip. Here, Palmer is literally sound asleep having a nap while he floats in my arms. Too cute. And I'd have to say that he was almost as popular an attraction as some of the animals. Everyone who swam by stopped to admire him and compliment us on having such a happy baby.

w>Overall, it was a great day. It's not something we'd do every year because of the cost. Let's face it--we could have bought a 7 day caribbean cruise ticket for what we spent to be here for 9 hours. Not sure that value equation works out for me. But there certainly was little to complain about and if you figure that a dolphin swim anywhere runs you about $200 a person, it actually works out to a bargain for the food and the supplies and especially the 14 day park admission. So, the cost equation does make sense. And what really matters--that we had a great time and made some great memories--is not in dispute.