Has anyone done Dolphins Up-Close Tour

[iman]

And is it worth it? My kids are 12 and 8. How much interaction do they really have with the Dolphins?

 

[mickey2minnie1]

I am in on this one. How large are the groups?

 

[aklumpp]

I'm wondering the same thing. My kids are 12 (son) and 7 (daughter).

 

[Mommy to Kayla]

Anyone have any advice?

 

[reelmom]

We did this tour last Saturday, June 8th. It was awesome. They only allow 16 on the tour. They take you to the Dolphin Nursery first. You get to see the trainers interact with the babies and pregnant females. You do not get to interact with these dolphins. You do get to ask as many questions and see a variety of hand signals and feeding. Then they take you to the main dolphin cove. Here they split up the group by families. We had 7 people in our family. They did put us by each other but we got to work with 2 trainers. Most groups had 2 dolphins to work with but we had 5 because our group was large. Here, the trainers will show you how to do hand signals. There is a lot of interaction with the dolphins. You get to touch the dolphins several times throughout. It was a great tour and we would do it again. My word of advice is enjoy it and not worry about taking pictures. I spent the whole time taking pictures and not focused on the dolphins. I didn't realize there was a photographer assigned to our family taking pictures the whole time across the pool. I knew he was there, I wasn't aware he would take pictures the whole time. His pictures were awesome. I bought the CD for $40.00. It had 57 pictures on it and comes with a release to print the pictures. I am glad we did it. All our kids(ages 9,10,11,12) really enjoyed it.

We also did the Behind the Scenes tour. This was my favorite. We got to pet a shark, see rescued animals in their holding pools, see inside a polar bear den, and get a meet and greet with a penguin. We were able to take our time with the penguin and get as many pictures as we wanted. The trainers never rushed us and answered all(and with 4 kids with us and several more on the tour, there were a lot of questions) of our questions.

 

[mickey2minnie1]

We did this tour last Saturday, June 8th. It was awesome. They only allow 16 on the tour. They take you to the Dolphin Nursery first. You get to see the trainers interact with the babies and pregnant females. You do not get to interact with these dolphins. You do get to ask as many questions and see a variety of hand signals and feeding. Then they take you to the main dolphin cove. Here they split up the group by families. We had 7 people in our family. They did put us by each other but we got to work with 2 trainers. Most groups had 2 dolphins to work with but we had 5 because our group was large. Here, the trainers will show you how to do hand signals. There is a lot of interaction with the dolphins. You get to touch the dolphins several times throughout. It was a great tour and we would do it again. My word of advice is enjoy it and not worry about taking pictures. I spent the whole time taking pictures and not focused on the dolphins. I didn't realize there was a photographer assigned to our family taking pictures the whole time across the pool. I knew he was there, I wasn't aware he would take pictures the whole time. His pictures were awesome. I bought the CD for $40.00. It had 57 pictures on it and comes with a release to print the pictures. I am glad we did it. All our kids(ages 9,10,11,12) really enjoyed it.

We also did the Behind the Scenes tour. This was my favorite. We got to pet a shark, see rescued animals in their holding pools, see inside a polar bear den, and get a meet and greet with a penguin. We were able to take our time with the penguin and get as many pictures as we wanted. The trainers never rushed us and answered all(and with 4 kids with us and several more on the tour, there were a lot of questions) of our questions.

Wow! Thank you for the info, especially about the picture taking. I will not worry about that.