Discovery Cove
Spend the day at Discovery Cove and step your own tropical reserve to snorkel with rays and colorful fishes, swim with bottlenose dolphins, float down a river and explore underwater grottos. Here kids have personal contact with exotic birds and marine animals in their natural habitat, and there's no schedules or waiting in lines.
Tip: Entrance to Discovery Cove also includes free admission to SeaWorld, so you can go to the park on a different day.
What to bring - All your family needs to bring is swim suits, sun hats, and a change of clothes.
Everything is provided, wetsuits in all sizes for parents and kids, fins, soft foam life jackets, animal-safe sunscreen, towels, lockers, plus snorkels and masks in kids' sizes (and you get to keep the snorkels and masks).
All meals are included, and there's plenty of kid-friendly food and snacks all day long. Food allergies can be accommodated also.
Tip: With warm water and wetsuits, Discovery Cove is fun year round.
Coral Reef and Ray Lagoon - Kids will easily spend hours snorkeling in the warm waters, where they'll see yellow, blue and purple tang, angel, butterfly fish, and cownose rays gliding by. Come nose-to- nose with blacktip sharks and barracudas (separated by a glass wall, but it's so transparent the sharks appear to swim with you, like all the other fish).
Tropical River - In crystal clear warm water, float under palm trees and rainforest vegetation, under waterfalls and through an underwater cave.
Aviary - In the Aviary, there's more than 250 birds flying around freely, as well as tiny Asian deer, guineafowl and colorful turkeys. Animal trainers have cups of food to feed the birds, and birds will land on the cup or your hand. Here's a brilliant black and yellow Turaco (with a bright red crest) nibbling on the vegetables in our food cup.
Trainer talks and animal encounters - At the Conservation Cabana, kids can touch replicas of bones and teeth and meet animal experts. Throughout the day, animal trainers give talks about birds and fascinating animals such as sloths, kinkajous, tortoises, kookaburas. And all around the park, animal care experts are available to answer any questions.
Beaches and pools - Relax on white sand beaches, stretch out on your beach chair, build sand castles extrordinaire. Little kids can splash in the shallow end of the fresh water resort pool. Buckets, sand toys, umbrellas, hammocks and beach chairs are all available.
Dolphin Lagoon An optional activity (for an additional fee) is a dolphin encounter with a small group, 6 8 people and the animal trainer. Kids get to rub, hug and kiss a dolphin, and ride with the dolphin, holding onto its fin! There'll also be a photo or DVD to capture this memorable experience (no need to lug along a waterproof camera). The dolphin encounter is for kids six years old and up.
