I posted this last week
Dolphinaris review
We just returned from the Western 03/08 and I wanted to post a review of the Dolphinaris excursion as there seems to be so little information on this Dolphin excursion. I was traveling alone with my 2 young daughters 5 and 7, and I was getting conflicting reports on if I would be able to take both childrean at Dolphin Discovery so I was glad when DCL added the Dolphinaris excursions. Dolphinaris has a kids excursion where they go alone without an adult, the adult does have to be an observer, I think the cost through DCL was $104 per child and $25 for the adult, so it was much cheaper than Dolphin Discovey, and I knew there would be no issue of getting there and being told I needed an adult for each child.
We meet at 11:55 and where put in a taxi for a short maximum 5 minute cab ride to to Dolphinaris. The facilities are brand new and very clean, and if you look on their web site exactly like the pictures. Once we got there, everyone was broken into groups and given life jackets. I overheard some of the parents say that the trainer was concerned that he had too many kids on this day, that he usually had 6 but on this day there was 18, I am not sure if I believe the 6, but 18 did seem high.
The kids were taken to the pool and what I really liked was that the area they were on in the pool was a cement platform with water about 2 ½ feet deep, that did not move., so I was not worried about my daughters being there by themselves. The observers were overlooking this area about 50 feet away.
The kids spent 1 hour in the water with the Dolphins, there were 3 Dolphins in the pool and they did all kinds of tricks and races. All the kids who wanted to get a kiss and also to shake hands with the Dolphin got to do that, while the one training was taking each child to a Dolphin, another trainer on the other side was doing tricks with another Dolphin to entertain the kids.
My oldest daughter loved it and did not want to get out, my 5 year old did not want to touch the Dolphins, but she stayed in the water the whole time and seemed to be having fun. All the other kids were having fun and I think only 1 got out about 45 minutes into the hour. When the kids left they were given a small plush Dolphin that is the favorite memento of the trip.
There was a small area that you could go in and swim after but we did not stop there. The change areas were clean and towel and locker rentals were available for $3.00. There is a restaurant bar area but we did not eat there.
When I booked through DCL, it said the excursion was 45 minutes in the pool and 1 hour total, but it ended up taking us almost 4 hours, so that was the one down side, luckily I had packed some snacks with us. The kids got in the pool from 1:30-2:30 and then by the time we got back to the port it was 3:30 and then we did some shopping at the mall outside the port.
When leaving we did have to ask for a taxi voucher for the return but there was no issue in them giving it to us. We never got the pictures as they said it was going to be another 15 minutes and there is no way they wanted to wait.
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