Our Travel Blog: 11th May - Orlando (Discovery Cove)

Today was AWESOME!!!! We went to Discovery Cove which is an all inclusive marine water park where you get to swim with dolphins, snorkel with tropical fish and stingrays, visit a bird aviary and float around on the tropical river. You also get all food, snacks and drinks for the day (including alcohol). They only allow a certain number of people in per day too so it never gets overcrowded. It actually felt like we were on a tropical island today.

Our dolphin experience was set for 9.45am so we started off by grabbing breakfast which was pretty good. We then picked up our wetsuit vests, found our locker and headed over to the Grand Reef. It was setting up to be a beautiful day again, but at 8.30am it was still a bit chilly and so was the water! Once we got over the initial coldness we headed off on our snorkel and it was amazing! There were tropical fish of all kinds everywhere, and stingrays swimming past everywhere you turned! I may have screamed like a little girl the first time one touched me on the way past!! We stayed in here until we had to head off for our dolphin experience.

For our dolphin experience, there were 9 of us in our group. Once we signed the typical waiver (in case the dolphin tried to kill us!!) we headed into the water we were introduced to the dolphins (they obviously control the water temperature here and it was even colder than the Grand Reef. It took us a while to stop shivering!!). The first dolphin showed off for us for a while, making noises and doing a few tricks. We then all got to touch it a few times (t felt rubbery and a bit squishy) and they explained a bit about the markings on their body. We also all individually got to kiss and hug one while they took photos. After this we then went out into the deeper water and got a ride on the back of the dolphin back to shore! It was a really fun experience. The two dolphins we got to interact with were Capricorn (a male dolphin who was about 50 years old and only had about 7 teeth left!) and Jenny who was 30 years old (and still had about 100 teeth!!!). Apparently, in the wild, dolphins only live about 30-35 years so Capricorn was very old!!

Once we were done here, we ventured over to the other side of the park and jumped into the tropical river (but not before grabbing a drink of course!!). Here we were able to float around for a while and check out the surroundings. Even better - the water was like bathwater so it was really enjoyable. By the time we finished here it was pretty much lunchtime. The restaurant was relatively quiet still, so we figured we would have lunch now and beat the crowds (glad we did too, because when we went past at 2.30pm it was chaos). There was a ridiculous amount of choices, but we restrained ourselves and went for the pulled pork sandwich, stir fried vegetables, chicken tenders and chips, two different kinds of salad and a piece of chocolate cake to share!!

After lunch we headed back to the Grand Reef for another snorkel. There were a lot more people here this time to maneuver around so we were glad we had been able to do it earlier in the day as well. The water was still pretty fresh, but the experience was just as good as the first time. It was starting to get really hot now, so we escaped the sun and went and checked out the bird aviary. There were heaps of different birds here and we were actually able to feed a few of them. One even flew down and sat on Wade's hand while it ate the food. We were pretty much done after this, so we showered, got changed and headed out of the park. It was a really good day, and would recommend that anyone coming to Orlando experience this park.

On our way back to the hotel we stopped in at Walmart - our first time this trip - and it didn't disappoint :-) We picked up the essentials - some bananas for me, buffalo wing flavoured Pringles, a trio pack of Reeses, Hersheys and Rolo and a bottle of Coke (the price of Coke hurt Wade the most - only $1.38 for 2Lt)!! We would be much richer if that was how much it cost at home!!

We had a bit of a rest then, before heading off to the other outlet shops for a bit more shopping....or so we thought. The outlets were crazy (we could only put it down to the fact that it was mother's day here tomorrow as well) and we were both so tired, so wandered around for a while but didn't actually buy anything. We then headed back to Universal CityWalk for dinner at NBA City. We skipped the starter tonight and decided to share a dessert - a Cheesecake Tower (it was so good and so bad at the same time).

Here are the photos/videos from today:

Discovery Cove