Discovery Cove Review - Sea World Orlando Florida

Discovery Cove in Orlando Florida is a theme park near Orlando where guests can interact with exotic birds, tropical fish, rays, and for an additional fee, dolphins. We visited Discovery Cove in September for my birthday. I loved it and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves the ocean.

We managed to wake up at a decent time and reach Discovery Cove by 8:15am. The cove doesn't official open until 9 am but they open up for registration at 8 am. We had plenty of time to explore the park, take pictures, and eat breakfast before our dolphin encounter.

Anyone can view the dolphin pools but only guests who pay extra can enter the water (with their dolphin trainer of course). We watched the trainers give the dolphins breakfast, vitamins, etc before we walked around and explored the park some more. Not too many guests showed up early so we really felt like we had the park to ourselves for the first hour.

We sat down for a nice breakfast. Food, snacks, and drinks are all included in the price of admission. The eating area is so nice and the staff is so friendly. Since the seating area is outside, there is a slight bird problem but I love birds so I didn't mind. As I scooted my tray to the side, a bird landed on the table and grabbed some food. A waitress quickly cleared the table and smiled, saying something about the birds. It was funny. Every time we ate, a server was kind of hovering waiting to remove our empty plates.

After breakfast, we picked up our water-vests. We could either get wetsuits or vests. We decided on vests but could always come back for the wetsuits if we changed our mind. Yeah right, like I was really going to attempt to squeeze myself into a wetsuit. The vest was very nice, comfortable, and helped with floating. I really don't need help with floating because I'm a professional floater but my boyfriend on the other hand sinks like a stone. We stowed our stuff in the complimentary lockers before we headed to our dolphin encounter.

Before the encounter, we all watched a short video on dolphins and then met our dolphin trainers. We were broken into small groups. My group had three couples and two individuals. Everyone was friendly and our trainer introduced us to our first dolphin Clipper. Clipper was a smaller female dolphin. We then met Capricorn, a bigger older male dolphin. We spent the most time with Capricorn, feeding and touching him. We posed for pictures and then took turns riding the dolphin.

After the 30 minute encounter, we looked at pictures from the session. I of course am a sucker for pictures and bought the CD with pictures for $150. The CD only had like 20 pictures on it but I figured since my boyfriend had paid for everything else, I could splurge on the CD. I do love the CD and pictures so I don't regret the purchase.

After the dolphin encounter we decided to eat an early lunch. Notice I say that lunch. Yep, we ate again later that afternoon. Snorkeling is very hard work and requires lots of fuel. Anyway, for our first lunch we had lobster salad sandwiches, ceaser salad, and strawberries. Plus the food is included in the price of admission.

After lunch, we picked up our snorkels and mask. We then stopped by the lockers for my camera and headed to the coral reef. I was very happy to see an employee holding a sloth. Guests were allowed to pet the sloth and the employee was happy to answer any questions of the animal.

I have been snorkeling before but that was a long, long time ago, before I developed a terrible gag reflex. It took me 30 minutes to get use to the snorkel but it was smooth sailing after that. There are lifeguards everywhere and there was an employee helping people in the coral reef. I asked for tips on snorkeling and he said "Just Relax." Gee thanks, now I'm all set.

There are two main snorkeling pools, the coral reef and the lazy river. The coral reef is salt water and the lazy river is fresh water. The fresh water is a lot warmer so when we got too cold from the salt water we would hop in the lazy river for awhile. We rotated between the two pools all day long.

Coral Reef is full of amazing fish, stingrays, and manta rays. The Lazy River has no fish but it does have very nice floral vegetation. Plus there are sunken items through out the river which were interesting to spot. The lazy river also passes through a bird atrium. There is a walk up entrance to the bird atrium and a swim up entrance that we used. The bird atrium was very cool but we only visited it once. We spent the majority of our time swimming.

I received an underwater camera from my boyfriend as a birthday present. It was awesome. I took 350 pictures throughout the day. I would have taken more but we ran out of time. The park closes at 5:30 pm. At closing they don't rush the guests out of the park, just out of the water. The staff gives the guests plenty of time to shower, shop, and look at pictures before leaving. I was talking to the staff and they mentioned that sometimes they don't get to leave until eight because of slow guests. We weren't that slow and were out of there by 6:30pm. I absolutely love Discovery Cove. We had so much fun!!!