Opinions please... Atlantis or Blue Lagoon dolphin encounter

[disneycruisedreams]

My family is looking to do the dolphin encounter (shallow water swim) in Nassau. Does anyone have any opinions either way? It seems the Atlantis one is 30 minutes($40 more) than the 15 minute one at Blue Lagoon.

 

[Twohsieh]

My family of five signed up for the Atlantis dolphin shallow swim encounter at Dolphin Cay. My kids had a fun time watching the Dolphins, but it is basically a photo shoot of each person hugging and kissing the dolphin. We did end up buying all the photos in a book as our souvenir.
I don't have any first hand information about the Blue Lagoon encounter, but I'm assuming it will be very similar to the Dolphin Cay encounter.
On our DCL Mexican Rivera cruise, my then four year old son signed up for a dolphin excursion in Cabo. He was able to swim on the back of the dolphin across the huge pool, holding the dolphin's pectoral flippers. He had so much fun feeding the dolphin, watching it do tricks and swimming with it.
I was hoping the Dolphin Cay encounter was as fun as the Cabo encounter. Although Dolphin Cay offers the Deep water encounter, the description of the activity sounds like it is targeted more toward the older kids. I hope my information helped.

 

[taishartrueblood]

I havnt done that Atlantis one, but I have done the Blue Lagoon one and it was great! Tell you what, if you cant find any video of the experience on youtube let me know and I will upload my video so you can see it. Also:

Honestly I would suggest this, this is what we did and saved like 50% on the excursion.

Book independently, do not go through Disney. That way you get off the ship in port, take a taxi (and there are taxis waiting for you at the port dock that charge $4/person anywhere on the island), and go to the Blue Lagoon Dolphion experience dock (they can give you specific info on when to be there). They have a large boat/ferry that takes you to the island. After the dolphin experience, there is a ferry from the island that takes you back to the mainland and it drops you off at the same pier as the Disney ship is at!

As to saving money on the pictures, I would just get all the pictures/video on a thumb drive (they sell that). The thumb drive is locked to prevent you copying pictures/video but some basic computer skills can get you past that. Save a ton of money that way.

 

[Partyof4LA]

We did the dolphin encounter on blue lagoon and loved it. There were plenty of photo opportunities, but these photos were taken while getting good interactions with the dolphin.
When you first get there, they take a photo of just your family with the dolphin, not really much interaction here, just a picture. Then they split everyone on the excursion into groups that fit on the platform (keeping your family/group together) and this is when you take turns interacting with the dolphin. When your group is done, you can leave the area. I remember doing the following: feeding him fish, rubbing his back, belly, and his tongue, dancing with him (highlight of my 3 year old's trip), hugging him, and he kisses you. There may have been more, I don't have my pictures handy. The trainers never rushed the dolphin and he did some silly playing in between people sometimes. Their photo package is pricy but they aren't pushy about it. We brought our waterproof camera in with us and got some great candid photos, no one said anything about it. We bought a 4 photo package from them as well but don't remember the price.
After the dolphins, we walked over to the private beach and swam there for a bit until the first ferry came back. We were back on the ship in time to still eat lunch at cabanas. It was a great day

 

[disneycruisedreams]

Thank you to everyone for the responses! We are probably going to do the Blue Lagoon dolphin swim. My kids are 10 and 12 and decent swimmers so we might go for the swim instead of the encounter! So excited! Our excursion a few years back was canceled due to weather in Mexico and the girls were so sad.