October 27th-November 4th, 2012/ Our 4th trip and our best trip/ASMu About This Page:

[chezp]

Sounds like a great day at SeaWorld. I love their shows.

[Cam22]

Glad you all enjoyed Sea World!

[bsblady01]

more please

[MsPeggySue911]

DAY 7: Friday, November 2nd, 2012

Today started off like every other day we have been here, with breakfast in the resort food court. The kids tried Omelets today and I had Sausage Gravy and Biscuits. DH had the same thing he has had every day, the Bounty Platter. For those of you who have never had the Bounty platter it has scrambled eggs, a piece of Sausage, a piece of Bacon, a biscuit, 2 French toast sticks and breakfast Potatoes. But DH told them they can leave off the Potatoes. He doesn’t care for their version of breakfast Potatoes.

I’m glad I found out that if the resort has Biscuits and gravy that it is just a snack credit because that helped stretch our CS credits a little further.

We headed out today to go back to Island of Adventure and Universal. This day was originally our free day. A day that we were possibly going to go to Aquatica. But I am not a big fan of water parks in general and it had been very chilly in Orlando this last week so I opted for us to not go to the water park since we had Discovery Cove (water park) scheduled for Saturday.

We decided to repeat our IOA/US day.

We went through the same motions as we did the other day. We always go first to Wizarding World of Harry Potter and ride Forbidden Journey, then Hippogriff, then the older kids and DH ride Dragon Challenge, then we all have a butter beer.

We all had Pizza for lunch ($50)

We headed out of the park by 3 pm and headed back to the resort. The kids decided to go down to the pool and play Ping Pong but not swim. Just hang out and meet some other kids. I told them we need to let the bathing suits kind of dry out because we would be in wet suits all day tomorrow with our bathing suit underneath it so a wet bathing suit would feel gross.

For dinner we had originally had a reservation to eat at the Beach Club’s Cape May Seafood Buffet again but after we ate there Monday and DH wasn’t too impressed with it (he doesn’t eat Crab legs) then I decided we wouldn’t repeat that reservation and I found some place else for us to eat.

I got online and looked up what was available for our day and time and House of Blues had an opening at 6:30 so I took it. I had made this House of Blues reservation on Monday night after we decided not to go back to Cape May. I didn’t wait until Friday to find a ressie.

We drove to Downtown Disney and parked right in the parking lot that is directly outside of House of Blues. It’s usually pretty easy to get a parking place way over there on the West Side by the Cirque theater because most ppl only park there if they are going to go to Cirque or Disney Quest or eat at Planet Hollywood. Your choices are limited on the West Side. It’s mostly for eating.

We went into H.O.B right at our reservation time and were seated immediately. It wasn’t jam packed crowded in there which is why I would go there again on another trip. It was Friday night and we didn’t have to wait to be seated.

Our server was reasonably quick and attentive.

The 3 buys ordered Steak, I ordered a Caesar salad, and DD ordered (I told her she wouldn’t like it) Lobster Mac N Cheese. She had never tried Lobster before and she was desperately wanting to try it and was convinced she would love it. Well, she didn’t.

My salad came out as whole Romaine leaves with some type of (cojita) Cheese sprinkled on the leaves but NO DRESSING at all. Not even on the side. I had to stop a waiter walking by and ask him if he could ask our server for some actual Caesar dressing for my salad. What he brought me back was a thick almost Orange pasty stuff like I have never seen before. Obviously too thick to actually spread on the salad so I had to get a bite of salad and dip it into the “dressing”. It did kind of taste like Caesar dressing but doesn’t look anything like any dressing I have ever seen.

Everyone had dessert then we left and headed back to the resort. Within 30 minutes of getting back to the room I was sick. As in throwing up sick. I think it was that dressing. It could have been some kind of stomach virus that only lasted 30 minutes but I strongly suspect it was that salad that made me sick. Because that was the only time I got sick and once the salad was gone from my stomach I never got sick again. So although I wouldn’t hesitate to go back to H.O.B I definitely would NOT ever order a Caesar salad again.

Up tomorrow Discovery Cove and swimming with the Dolphins.

[chezp]

So sorry about that dressing (it sounded really yuck! ) and the fact you got sick. Not a good end to the day. I hope you're Ok by the next day.

[Roxie2006]

Enjoyed all of your updates. I don't know how the kids could swim with the unusal cool weather Florida was having. It sounded like after eating your salad you had food poison. Hope you felt better quick...

[Colexis Mom]

Sounds like more great days, except for the dressing and getting sick!

[MsPeggySue911]

DAY 8: Saturday November 3rd, 2012

Today is our Discovery Cove day. We didn't have breakfast at the resort this day since your breakfast is included with the cost of your admission to DC. We drove over to Discovery Cove and got there about 7:45 am. We were about the 8th person in the parking lot so we got to park really close to the building at the front.

When you walk in there are little reception desks on both sides and a person standing out in the middle directs you to a reception desk.

After you give them your name and show them your printed tickets they take your picture for your photo ID lanyard and they explain a little about the park. They assign you a time for your Dolphin swim if you have paid for that.

I started to ask them if they could give us a swim time for after lunch but since he didn’t ask me if we had any preference I just kept quiet and let them assign us a time. Our time was 9 or 9:30. I can’t remember specifically. I didn’t write it down so I easily forget. It was early though.

We went to the restaurant and had breakfast. They have a buffet line you go through and they have a wide variety of offerings but I can’t specifically remember what they all were. I know they had the main things like Eggs, Bacon and Sausage. I asked my husband if he remembers what I ate for breakfast because I can’t remember and he doesn’t remember either. So I can’t be of any help in that area.

I had read in several reviews and trip reports of Discovery Cove that if you want to be able to feed the birds in the Aviary to go early while they are all still hungry. The later on in the day it is the more ppl have been in to feed them and they aren’t hungry.

So we got there first thing and was able to have very good interaction with the birds. They have all different shapes and sizes of birds and they will absolutely fly down and land on you. Your arm, your hand, you head. I really enjoyed feeding the birds. I would like to have had more time to stay in there and feed them but with such an early Dolphin swim time we only had about 15-20 minutes to spend with the birds.

We had already stopped by and gotten wet suits and put them on so we didn’t have to worry about doing that. They have free lockers and we had stopped and gotten 2 lockers and put our stuff away and switched our regular shoes for our swim shoes. About 10 minutes before our Dolphin swim time we headed over to the Cabana where you meet the trainers and had to fill out a bunch of paperwork, release forms for every member of our party. 5 of us.

They had some kind of hold up and the trainers were late getting there so the one trainer who was there showed us a couple of little videos that they normally don’t show you just trying to kill some time and then asked everybody if they had any questions. Of course we had one lady who decided she is going to ask about 30 questions about what is required to become a Dolphin trainer because she wants to become one. Just when we thought she was done she would ask ANOTHER question. Finally the trainers showed up and we were broken into 4 groups of 8 or 9 and taken down to the lagoon.

We all walked into the water and it is very, very cold. I can’t say it is the coldest water I have ever been in because the Shark reef at Typhoon Lagoon was just as cold if not colder than this Dolphin water but it felt like freezing cold ice water. You can’t just bail off in there all gung ho. You really do have to ease yourself down in it a bit at a time. I actually never got use to it the whole time we were in there. (30 minutes)

They use 2 different Dolphins for the interaction. The first one they bring out they bring up really close to you and have it swim past the whole group really close so that everybody can reach out and touch it while it is swimming by. She has the Dolphin do this several times.

She also has us do some hand signals to the Dolphin that gets it to make squeaky noises through it’s blowhole. We each got to feed it a Fish. Then once that is over they bring out a second different Dolphin for the actual swim part. It seems like they use the younger Dolphins for the first interaction then bring out the older Dolphins for the part where it pulls you through the water.

In between the touching and the swimming part, they have your whole family get together in front of the Dolphin for pictures. Not only do they take pictures of you the whole time all this is going on they are also video taping it so that they can try to sell you the DVD of your interaction later. I didn't buy the DVD. It was $50 and I knew we would never watch it so it would be a waste of money to even get it.

You can choose to either do a deep water swim or a shallow water swim. My DH, DD and DSS decided on doing the deep water swim and DS and I decided on doing the shallow water swim. Although I can swim perfectly fine and have been able to since I was very young, I don’t like treading water and I don’t like being in deep water without a life jacket on.

No matter whether you choose the deep water swim or the shallow water swim the Dolphin pulls you about the same length. You hold onto it’s top fin with your left arm and hold onto it’s side fin with your right arm, or vice versa depending on what side of the Dolphin they put you on.

After about 30 minutes we were all through and when you get out they have ppl waiting to take you into this little Cabana where you can look at all your pictures and they show you what different picture packages they offer. That is also when you choose which of your pictures you want printed out and made into key chains. I picked the Adventure package ($159) which gives you 6 printed 6X8 photos, 2 photo keychains and a CD of all your park pictures for the day. But you don’t’ have to go get your pictures right then. You just chose which package you want. And although the prices for the pictures is complete highway robbery, there is no way I could have this once in a lifetime experience and NOT get the photos from it. DH really didn’t want to spend almost $200 on pictures but I talked him into it. (We had already spent $149 on a photopass + so this would be $300 spent on just photos for this trip)

Oh, and I forgot, they also get a picture of each person where you put your hands under the Dolphins chin and reach down and give him a kiss on the snout.

After the dolphin swim we went back to the birds for a few minutes and then went into the lazy river. The lazy river felt really nice and warm after having been in that freezing cold water. Just an FYI if you ever plan on going to Discovery Cove, there are 2 waterfalls you have to go under that totally drown you as you go under them. You can avoid them by taking a short cut through the aviary and I tried to do that but got a little lost in the maze of aviary and ended up going right back out the way I came in and had to go under the waterfalls anyway. Then my family had gotten way ahead of me in the lazy river and I had to swim pretty hard to catch up with them. It made me mad that they didn’t wait for me and went on ahead without me because had I not been able to catch up to them we could have gotten separated and not been able to find each other again in that big park.

After the lazy river we went to have lunch. Now I do remember what they had for lunch. I had grilled Talapia, which was amazingly good. They had hot dogs, burgers, Chicken Tenders, fries, Mac N Cheese, salads desserts and any kind of drink you could want. This would be the first of 2 lunches we would have there. After spending a few hours in the warm water Oasis we went back and had another lunch.

The warm water oasis is nice. You can swim by a glass enclosure that has Otters and there is a little island that has Marmocet monkeys. There are seats made into the water you can sit on. It does get deep in some places which I don’t like but you can avoid the deep areas by staying around the sides near the walls. I sat on a ledge while the family swam around playing and having a good time.

A park photographer came along and asked if we wanted to have some underwater shots and since it is included in your photo CD and doesn’t cost extra I told her to go ahead and take some underwater shots.

There are snacks and drinks available to you all day. The kids had soft Pretzels about 4 times through out the day. They have Granola bars and Trail Mix. They even have alcohol and mixed drinks. We didn’t drink any alcohol but they had very good sweat tea. They also had Ice cream sandwiches and Strawberry fruit frozen ice cream bars. We took full advantage of the food and drink offerings through out the day. You pay $279 per person to be there so there is no guilt in eating all day long if you want to. For almost $300 a day they could serve you Steak and Lobster if they wanted to.

But our $279 Ultimate tickets included entry into Sea World, Aquatica and Busch Gardens for up to 14 days from date of first use. It only costs $20 more to make your ticket into the ultimate ticket that includes Busch Gardens.

Now since my DH and I have Sea World season passes we could have gotten discounted tickets into Discovery Cove for just $169 per person but it would not have included entry into any of the other parks. It would have been Discovery Cove only. And going to the other parks was in our plans so paying the full price for the tickets saved us a lot of money in the long run.

Also, you can use your Discovery Cove tickets to get into any of the other parks BEFORE you use them for Discovery Cove. You just show your Discovery Cove ticket at the turnstiles to the other parks and you get in. No problem. That came in handy considering Discovery Cove was our last park day.

We ended up getting out of our wet suits, getting dressed and getting ready to leave about 3 pm.
I stopped by and picked up our photo package. It took them about 10 minutes to print everything up and burn the CD and make the keychains. Since I went so far before closing there was not a big line of ppl waiting to get their pictures yet. But by the time we left we were all tired and ready to go.

We drove back to the resort and had an afternoon rest before heading off To DTD for dinner at Rainforest Café. Instead of taking the boat from POR again we drove ourselves to DTD and had to end up parking all the way down between Planet Hollywood and T-Rex and walking all the way to the end of the marketplace side of DTD. Rainforest is at the very beginning of DTD marketplace and there is no place to park over there. SO if you plan on parking yourself to go there, there is going to be a walk involved. No way to get around it.

The 3 guys had Steak, DD had Chicken fried Chicken and I had Fried Shrimp. We had desserts and the whole experience only took about 1.5 hours from the time we checked in to the time we walked out. The bill was $200. That’s how much almost every sit down dinner was for the 5 of us.

We drove back to the room and started getting our stuff ready to leave the next day.
The kids had had enough swimming for the day so they didn’t go swimming back at the resort but they did go down to the pool and played Ping Pong and watched the outdoor movie.

Early to bed. Up tomorrow, we leave for home.


DAY 9: November 4th, 2012

We woke up and got packed up to leave. We got all our bags down to resort airline check in and went back to the room and just watched TV for 2 hours killing time until time to leave for the airport.

We returned the rental car and flew home.

Next trip November 10th 2013 Adults only trip

[Cam22]

Bummer on Day 7 that your salad made you sick! But Discovery Cove sounded wonderful!

[chezp]

What a wonderful way to end your vacation! We've done Discovery Cove a couple of times now and I love the way they keep improving it - now you can have the shallow water swim for example. When we first went in 2000, you couldn't do that and I felt very uncomfortable, as like you, I'm fine with swimming, but I don't like treading water.

Thanks so much for sharing your trip with us.

[shazza]

Enjoyed your report. You really packed a lot into your trip!

[Colexis Mom]

Glad you had a great time at Discovery Cove! Thanks for taking us along for the ride!

[MsPeggySue911]

Thanks everybody for reading my trip report.