“Swimming with the Dolphins…kinda sorta”

When we asked our kids what their favorite part about our vacation was, it was unanimously decided that the dolphins were their favorite.  We have been on several cruises and never spent the money to go see the dolphins.  But because we were able to save quite a bit of money on our trip overall (that will be the next post), we decided to try it out.

We decided on the Blue Lagoon Dolphin Encounter.  It was a blast!  We had a 25 minute boat ride to the island, which was beautiful.

 

This was the scene pulling up to the island.

At Blue Lagoon, they have dolphins and sea lions that you can interact with.  They also have a beach day that you can purchase.  Look at this inflatable water park!

There were two dolphin options: the encounter and a deep water swim.  Our first choice was to do the swim, but SaraGrace wasn’t old enough to do that.  Also, Emmy could go as an observer, but obviously someone had to sit with her.  My husband is AWESOME and sat with her on the observation deck.  He took all of these pictures but one.

The dolphins were swimming around having a great time.  When we got separated into our groups, they advised a wet suit.  I despise wet suits!!!  I thought I would tough it out, but that water felt like Ginnie Springs on a good day.  So I gave in:)

We made it over to our designated dolphin area, only to learn that our dolphins were in time out.  WHAT!?!?  We had to laugh that OUR dolphins would be the ones in time out.  Apparently they weren’t following directions, so they had to take a time out.  The cute part was that Andy (our dolphin in the picture) tried to earn brownie points by collecting marine debris and bringing it to his trainer.  It was very sweet:)

We got in the water onto a waist-deep platform.  I had to hold SG because she was too short.

The first order of business was to get a family photo.  The Blue Lagoon photographer took this one.

Rob was behind us so he got some pictures as well.

  We each got to hug Andy.

Then we got a kiss.

Me and SG had a group hug.

But she wanted her own kiss.

We got to pet his belly and his head.

Then we got to dance.

At the end of our time (which was about 25 minutes), he did some jumping tricks for us.

 

We had to get back to the ship pretty quickly since it was Pirate Night, and we had a lot of dressing up to do.  I am so glad we spent the money to do this.  The kids are still talking about it, which means that they made memories.  Some of the best money we spent all week!