Yet another day with an early start for me. I had the Dolphin in Depth tour booked at Epcot. I got up and had my Key Lime Tart and headed to the bus stop. I did not have to wait very long for the bus and I got to the meeting point for the tour way too early. Still, I had brought my book, there were benches and the weather was nice so I did not mind at all. The other participants arrived quite early, too so we started to chat amongst ourselves.
At the meeting time, we were met by two trainers and a supervisor, who ticked us off, gave out name stickers and told us the ground rules (like no taking photos backstage) and then she left us in the capable hands of the trainers. We did a quick round of introductions and were asked what previous experience we had with dolphins. Most people have never had the chance to interact with a dolphin before and I had by far the most previous experience when it came to interacting with dolphins. There was a family of three (mother with son and daughter), two couples and myself. I was the only non-American person in the group, which came as somewhat of a surprise as there are usually plenty of Brits at Discovery Cove and Seaworld.
Once the introductions were over, we headed backstage to The Seas with Nemo and Friends and straight to the changing rooms. We were told to leave our bags and all jewellery in the lockers, but not to get changed at this stage. Once we had locked everything away, we met in the hallway in front of the changing rooms where we were all given a large puzzle piece that represented a body part of a dolphin. We had to put the dolphin back together and where told what each body part does.
Once we completed that task, we headed over to the public areas of the pavilion and were quickly introduced to the four dolphins through the glass. We then headed up through the air-conditioning duct, which had a spiral staircase inside. When we got upstairs, we were right on top of the tanks and got an impression just how big those tanks really are. On the intersection of two of the walkways that run along the top of the tanks, there was a little classroom set up, where we got a talk about the diet of the dolphins. This was followed by a short video about training dolphins and an interactive talk about training methods used with the dolphins. There was nothing new to me there, as they use the same methods and pretty much the same signals that they use at Discovery Cove.
Once the talk was over, we headed back down to the public area, where they had roped off an area right in front of the glass of the dolphin tank for us. They are working on shape recognition with one of the dolphins at the moment and we had a grandstand view of the training and research session.
They had two different shapes, a Mickey head and a T shape that were hung on suction cup hooks on the glass on the tank. A trainer would hold up one of the shapes in between the two shapes and the dolphin had to point towards the corresponding shape. If he succeeded, he was recalled by a trainer at the back of the tank and rewarded. If he got it wrong, he was asked to try again and if he got it wrong again was pointed to the correct shape and then rewarded. They kept swapping the two shapes on the suction cup hooks around. Once the dolphin started to get bored, they stopped.
Once the session was over, we headed to the classroom, where we did an exercise during which we had to guess how long certain items that people might drop in the water will take to degrade. We were totally wrong with this. This was then followed with a talk about conservation issues and a short video. During this session, we also learned that more people are bitten by dolphins around the Florida coast every year than are bitten by sharks.
After the classroom session, we headed back to the changing rooms to get changed into our wetsuits and booties. My hairstyle caused a little excitement. I had my hair braided on one of my cruises and they wove in beads as well. All hair accessories had to be removed and replaces with their hair bands. Unfortunately this was easier said than done with me, and it actually took about 2 hours when I got home after our vacation to remove the braids. There was no way I could have removed them. When I was at Discovery Cove, nobody even blinked about my hair even though I was actually swimming with the dolphin there rather than just standing in waist deep water. I mentioned that to the trainer and she disappeared off somewhere and then came back to check that the beads are completely woven in. She then said I was OK to participate with my braids provided that I tied the rest of my hair into a ponytail with one of their hair bands. I was only too happy to comply.
So we were finally off to see the dolphins. We went through the public areas of the pavilion and up the air-conditioning duct to the top of the tank. There two more trainers, who explained, what would happen, and what we would have to do if the dolphins did not cooperate, met us. We were asked to sit down on seats at the back of the interaction platform while the trainers called two of the dolphins over. We were slip into two groups and each group was assigned a dolphin and a trainer. Once the trainer was happy, we were called over. I felt quite uncomfortable, which really surprised me considering how many dolphin interactions I had done. There was almost no light in that area and I found this twilight very disorientating. Add to that that the platform was sloping downwards and the booties had hardly any grip and I was afraid that I would end up in the tank as the latest dolphin toy. Of course nothing happened and once the dolphin was between me and the edge of the platform, I was a lot happier. We got to touch the dolphin a few times and got a dolphin kiss. We then met another dolphin and were again allowed to touch him. After this we were asked to go back to the seats while they swapped the dolphins back. We were then called forward one at a time to spend some more time touching and hugging the dolphin and have a photo taken with him. Once the photos had been taken, everybody was called back onto the interaction platform and we were each taught the hand signal for a specific behaviour. We were not told what the dolphin would do, but one after the other was asked to make eye contact with the dolphin and give him the hand signal. My signal was for a tail walk. Once the dolphin had performed the correct behaviour, the trainer called him back and the person who gave the hand signal rewarded the dolphin with some fish and a rub down. Once everybody had done their hand signal, we learned some more hand signals, which we carried out together for behaviours like fast swims and breaches. Towards the end of our interaction, we signaled all the dolphins to show off together and then it was time to say goodbye to our new dolphin friends. They even waived goodbye with their tail flukes as we left the water.
We headed back to the changing room to get showered and changed. Afterwards we headed back to the classroom where we had to fill out a customer satisfaction survey, had the chance to ask more question and received our photo and a souvenir t shirt. I was really disappointed in the photo. The photo was really grainy and both mine and the dolphins eyes were bright red. We were then escorted back to the meeting point outside the park.
I see his point as it wouldn't be much fun for him I don't think. If you can afford it I don't think you'd regret it!
The trainer told us that the bird was taking the salt off his skin 
