I booked my family's "Royal Dolphin swim" with shoretrips.com
about 10 months before we sailed and had no problems at all with them. They give you detailed instructions.
I would really recommend this swim if your children are old enough - they need to be 8yrs old. My children are 9 & 11, and they loved it. It was the highlight of our hurricane affected cruise.
Others that were on our cruise, said that the encouter was OKAY, but when they heard what we had done with the dolphins, wished they had known about the Royal Swim.
I got a lot of info from the dolhpindiscovery.com website before I booked. You can even swim with sea lions if you want.
Other members of your party won't have to book the excursion, just catch a taxi and pay park entrance fee. An elderly mother of someone in our dolphin group just stayed on the pier above us and watched & took photos.
By the way, we left the ship the same time as
DCL dolphin excursion, and we arrived 45 minutes at the park before they did.
They must wait until all the passengers have been assigned taxis and arrived at the park. In the meanwhile, we had checked in and had had a swim before our dolphin swim.
The video you can buy is also a great souvenier!
Hope this helps.
