Swimming with Florida’s Sea Creatures

Florida is not only known for its crystal clear water and white sandy beaches, but also for their marine animals. Florida offers a variety of dolphin swimming programs that will cost you about $150 on average. I highly recommend that you make advanced reservations. And make sure you meet the minimum age required and/or size limits.

Discovery Cove

Discovery Cove is one of the best attractions in Orlando, Florida. It is located next to the famous Sea World Orlando. At Discovery Cove, you will have the chance to swim with the dolphins. Guests wait for this once in a lifetime experience to swim with the bottlenose dolphin and interact with this friendly and fun loving creature one on one. It truly is the highlight of the day for everyone.

Besides swimming with dolphins, you can also interact with birds, rays and fish. You can hand-feed the birds and swim with the stingrays or just relax on one of their man-made beaches.

Make your reservations early because this park is limited to 1,000 guests per day. Admission is $229-269 with dolphin swim, and $129-159 without the dolphin swim.

Theater of the Sea

Like the Discovery Cove, the Theater of the Sea offers a lot of opportunity to swim and interact with fun loving marine animals. You can take a boat ride in natural saltwater lagoons. These lagoons are home to Atlantic bottlenose dolphins, sea lions, stingrays, game fish, sharks to name a few.

They also have entertaining shows. And you might even get lucky and get a kiss from a sea lion.

This marine animal park is very popular, that I suggest you make reservations in advance.

Sea World Orlando

Sea World is best known as the home of Shamu, the killer whale. It is the most popular attraction at Sea World. People fill the open-air amphitheater just to see the show. It is fascinating to watch the whales swim and interact with each other.

Aside from giant whales, they also have walruses and belugas of the Arctic to the bottlenose dolphins of tropical waters.

Sea World also offers a sea lion and otter show and the new Blue Horizon’s show. They have more than 100 animal performers. Sea World also features Odyssea, an acrobatic, non-traditional circus.

And last but not the least the Shamu Happy Harbour, a big play area where kids can climb up giant nets, jump on trampolines or just simply enjoy water activities. Make sure to pack their swimsuits.

Admission fee is about $60 for adults and $48 for children ages 3-9.

There are many other marine parks in Florida. But these are my favorite ones.

Have a wonderful time and enjoy the dolphins.