Discovery cove and Cold Water Whimps

[brenda1966]

My daughter and I are both whimps when it comes to cold water. We like our pools 90 degrees. We find the Disney ones, at 84, to be tolerable, but not warm.

I really want to go to Discovery Cove and enjoy ourselves. Will we be able to when the warmest water is still not even 80 degrees? I really thought only the dolphin pool would be ice water, but I was told even the lazy river is only 78-80 degrees.

I understand there are wet suits, but they only cover half your legs and not even all of your arms. Will that be enough to keep our lips from turning blue?

We are not going until late october, so it likely won't be hot enough for cold water to feel refreshing -- it will just feel cold.

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

You will be fine .

From the DC website:

What is the temperature of the water in the pools?
The temperature of our pools remains constant throughout the year. The fresh water Serenity Bay and Wind-Away River are maintained around 85-88 F (30 C). The salt water Dolphin Lagoon maintained around 72 F (22 C), and The Grand Reef are 77 F (25 C).

The wind-away river feels literally like bath water.....it is so warm and wonderful. Definitely more than 80 degrees.

The only place we felt really cool (and just for a while....we did adjust pretty quickly) was during the dolphin interaction. And you are only in that water for 30-45 minutes, tops.

I am the kind of person who takes a shower with the water one degree before scalding, so I worried about the same thing (and we went in January....which meant the air temperature was also a concern). The wetsuits help more than you think they will. So zip yourself up and prepare for an awesome time!

[brenda1966]

Thanks for the reassurance! When I was on the phone with DC I asked about the water temp and the gal told me 78-80, but I think she was referring to the fish tanks, even though I asked about the lazy river.

I'm sure the excitement of being in with dolphins will help keep us warm.

[KristenHoneymooner]

I was just at DC on Friday and I am also a cold-water wimp! I wore a short-sleeved wetsuit in the morning, despite 90-degree temps, and changed to a vest after lunch. My husband was in the short-sleeved wetsuit all day. I changed to a vest mostly because of the annoyance of taking the wetsuit off to use the bathroom, not because I was too warm in it.

The dolphin area and great reef area both felt cold at first, but we adjusted to both just fine! I would recommend wearing the wetsuit for the dolphin portion, though, rather than just the vest. That was the most difficult temperature of water to adjust to.

The freshwater oasis and lazy river areas felt like bathwater.

Have fun!

[brenda1966]

Thanks! I like hearing that word: "bathwater".

We'll start in the wet suits for sure.

[Yubbie]

If you don't have much fat on your bones, definitely go for the wetsuits. However, you'll be in and out of the water in the hot Florida sun plus switching from the colder water to the warmer water and having so much fun you won't have time to be cold.

[Leona Fishback]

I'll be an another reassuring answer -- I'm a total cold water wimp, but the lazy river was very warm. I bet many "normal" people would say it was too warm. We wore shorty wetsuits even though we were there in May but we definitely had to peel those off when we went to the lazy river. The otter thing wasn't open when we were there, but I'd read that it's lazy river temperature.

[blue65829]

I think you'll be totally fine, we just went last week and not on a terribly hot day and adjusted quickly to the dolphin encounter water, which was initially cold! Once you're in there you are pretty focused on what's going on anyway. We wore vests the whole day and never really had a problem. In fact I had more of an issue getting in to the pool at our resort - which felt freezing to me.

As pp's have indicated the lazy river is a wonderful bath-water temperature, just perfect.