We did this tour last Friday the 21st.
The tour starts at the dolphin nursery. You get to watch as a few of the animal keepers come out to feed the dolphins and do some tricks/training with them. Instead of standing in the public area, you stand on the other side of the nursery where there is no fence between you and the pool (you still have to stay about 5 feet away from the edge of the pool).
You can get a nice view of what the trainers do in this area and you are closer to the dolphins as they come up to get fish, but it is otherwise not very interactive. During our tour, we only had a total of seven people (three adults and four kids), so they let each one of us throw a fish into the pool at the very end. They said this is not always a part of the tour.
We stopped by the bathrooms on our way over to the other dolphin feeding area to wash the fish smell off our hands.
We then walked over to Dolphin Cove and got to go right down to where others would usually be doing the dolphin feeding experience. The area was not crowded and our tour of 7 split into two smaller groups each with a dolphin and a trainer. The trainer showed us some of the hand signals and the dolphin made sounds and did various tricks. During this time, the dolphin swims up to the wall and you are invited to touch the dolphin on its back. There were two photographers for each of our groups, so there were a LOT of pictures available. I think you can purchase all your digital pictures for the day for something around $60 and there are other various less expensive options too.
We did this tour because my daughter LOVES dolphins and we wanted her to have a chance to get close to one before our day at Discovery Cove (she is very timid and we wanted her to have a chance to see them up close first before getting in the water with a dolphin). However, in hindsight, I think we could have skipped it and just done the dolphin feeding instead for the same purpose.
If you are NOT doing Discovery Cove, I would recommend this tour for anyone who likes dolphins since we felt we had time to ask questions, it didn't feel rushed, and you get to touch the dolphin (I don't think you get to do that with the typical dolphin feeding experience at Dolphin Cove). If you ARE doing Discovery Cove, then just skip this tour since the time at Discovery Cove is a lot more interactive.
My daughter doesn't like rides (at all!), so we did this tour and the Penguin tour on the same day. I liked this tour a whole lot more than the penguin tour and would recommend this one, especially for the buy-one-get-one free offer. It made the day special.
My words of advice:
1. I recommend the early tour at 9:30. The trainers said this is the best tour since the dolphins are most active for the first tour. Also, a lot of the shows at SeaWorld don't seem to start until after 11 AM, so when you do an early tour you can still make it numerous shows.
2. This is a good tour if you have someone with mobility challenges. My husband uses a mobility
scooter and he was able to bring it with him and only had to walk around 50 feet at each location and then stand for 10 minutes or so at a time. On the penguin tour, we had to leave it pretty far from the penguin exhibit and had to walk/stand for the entire 45 minute tour. He made it, but for some, that might be too much.
