Gryffindor's on tour 2017 Day 6 13 Aug Discovery Cove

[Excitedx4]

This was the second night in a row I was woken up by an alarm going off in the front bedroom that nobody was using, I'd tried to turn the thing off the night before so tonight I just yanked it out of the wall!

Anyway MY alarm went off at 6am to get us all up for Discovery Cove. This was a last minute addition to our holiday and was added on by Floridatix because we had bought our Seaworld/Busch tickets by them they were selling the Discovery Cove as an add on. We had 3 swims booked and Dave was a non swim, he'd swam with dolphins a few times before and wasn't really too bothered so he was going to be at the side and be our camera man, or so we thought...

Anyway I gets everybody up, we throw on our clothes, brush teeth and was our faces before setting off at 6.20am, we arrive and park up at 6.50am at DC. There were a few people there forming a queue so we hopped in behind them. The doors opened at 7am and we were let in to be checked in. We wanted to get there early to make sure we could secure a disabled chair for Evan as they are a first come first served basis. We went through bag check and were checked in and given a 8.10am swim time. We got a wheelchair for Evan to use in DC, it was great in the sand but not great for Evan's posture as it was sloping back, he absolutely hated it.

The ground of DC are lovely though and it reminded me of the Caribbean resorts I'd stayed in previously.

We went to the lockers to get changed and found some beds by the dolphin bays as they are pretty central and accessible enough for Evan.

We were to meet at 8am to have our introduction video and meet our trainer Sarah. Sarah spoke to us asking if we need any assistance in the water with Evan and I said yes as I had both the children in there on my own. She went away to arrange this.

All of our group are then escorted to the water to begin our swim. The water aisstance in nowhere to be found so the trainer asks Dave to come into the water to assist Evan, but first he has to sign a waiver. You can tell we are in the land of suing culture!

We are given the dolphin Clipper. She is 20 years old and was born at Seaworld. She has 4 children all at DC.

Now this might not be a popular opinion on the Dibb but I didn't rate the experience at all. It was a good interaction with the dolphin don't get me wrong and the kids absolutely loved it, but me personally, I felt like it was a big conveyor belt and the main focus wasn't the interaction with the dolphin, it was about getting the perfect picture so they could sell it to you for more money. The whole set up was about the videos and pictures. I just wasn't feeling it. And I'm not really a negative person, I don't complain very often and try and see the good in every situation, but I really couldn't see past the big money making opportunities. Once our 30 minutes were up it was straight out of the pool and into the hut to... wait for it... sell you your pictures! They were really quite forceful about buying the packages. I told them we would think about it over breakfast as we were really hungry by this point.

We then got the whole spiel about how busy it is later to buy them blah blah blah. I was getting hangry. :angry: I didn't like how pushy they were, we had paid a lot of money to be there for the day and now it was like spend more money!

Anyway we got in the queue for breakfast at 9.20am, it was quite long but moved quickly thankfully. We had a range of cooked breakfast, cereal, muffins and drinks. It wasn't great but it was fine for the masses. It filled a whole, o was that hungry I would of at a scabby dog.

We went off to explore at this point

Jacob and I went off to the lazy river with some floats and had a lovely time just going around relaxing. Evan was still a bit funny with the water so decided to sit on the sunbed with his ipad. Dave stayed with Evan and chilled in the lounger too.

I come back and swap with Dave so he goes off to explore with Jacob and me and Evan go and see what was on offer for lunch at 11.15 as he hadn't eaten much breakfast and I was concerned with his MCADD. He decided he wanted meatballs and chocolate cake which he wolfed down. I didn't eat at this point as I'd only had breakfast 2 hours ago, I just sat with him and had a Coke Zero.

Dave came and found us so me and Jacob went off to the grand reef to see the stingrays and do a bit of snorkelling, boy was it cold in here! We stayed for maybe 30 minutes before I called time in the pretence that I needed the toilet haha bad mum alert!

We went back to the table and found Dave eating a salad! Me and Jacob went and got burgers and wraps with chocolate cake and strawberry cake, they were nice enough. When we were eating around 1.30pm it began to thunder really bad and absolutely chucked it down non stop for about 2 1/2 hours! I won't lie it did put a dampener on the day!

Whilst we were waiting for the code to change to green meaning the pools were declared open I was messing in the sand with my feet digging my feet into the sand when I felt something on my toe, a weird sensation, my blooming big toenail had fallen off! Omg it knocked me sick. It was still hanging on by a tiny thread so it was flapping around. I climbed mt snowdon back in may and bruised all my toenail and now it had eventually fallen off 🤢🤢🤢

I went to the first aid centre, I walked in and there were 3 staff, it must of been a slow day because they all jumped on me and treated me like royalty! They cleaned it all off from the sand and said it wasn't ready to pull off completely so they covered it with gauze and gave me some to take home also, faultless service from them in first aid. And yes I did have to sign a waiver form

Jacob and I headed back to the lazy river and stopped at the aviary to feed the birds, this was actually really good and we enjoyed it in here. As we were making out way around the lazy river one of the waterfalls knocked my prescription glasses off my face and fell to the bottom of the floor. I couldn't see a thing I'm really blind. Some lovely young lad dived down and retrieved them for me, I was really grateful.

Dave and Jacob went for one last swim in the reef (I wasn't making that mistake again) around 4.30pm so I sat with Evan on the sunbed and we watched a dolphin swim. I worked out that for every 1/2 hour swim they have capacity for 120 people, that is some serious dollar that Seaworld are making!

Anyway Dave and Jacob came back with some ice cream for us all, once we'd eaten that we packed up and headed back home to the villa.

We didn't end up buying the photo package, mainly because we didn't particularly enjoy the day and it felt like throwing some more good money after bad. Dave did video the kids swimming with the dolphins so we have got that anyway. I think it was a combination of a lot of things making it a bit unsuccessful for us, the weather, it being quite unsuitable for Evan which we knew and is the reason we don't really do water parks but we also have an able bodied child that we need to consider and Jacob had a wonderful day, it just highlighted a lot of things that Evan can't do due to his disability. He spent most of the day on the sun lounger on his iPad. The pressure put on us to buy the photos and to top it all off my toenail falling off 😂🙈. Would we head back there again? Probably not. It was an expensive day and we can say we've swam with dolphins now and given the kids that experience but not one I'm in a hurry to repeat.

We got back to the villa at 6.30pm, Jacob jumped straight in the pool because he hadn't swam enough today 😂

We all had baths and showers, Dave went for a little fish and see his mate the gator! We all settled down had some sandwiches for tea and watched 'Big Daddy' which the kids loved. We were all in bed for 10pm.

Tomorrow Busch Gardens 🤗

[Goldia]

A shame discovery cove didn't quite hit the mark for you. You are right it is a conveyor belt of photos (which we did buy...). I'm really enjoying your report and looking forward to the next update.

[Excitedx4]

Originally Posted by Goldia

A shame discovery cove didn't quite hit the mark for you. You are right it is a conveyor belt of photos (which we did buy...). I'm really enjoying your report and looking forward to the next update.

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I'll hopefully get at least 1 day up tomorrow if not 2 🙃🙃

[Jaspercat10]

Wow what a shame you didn't enjoy dc it's such an expensive day ☹️ X

[Excitedx4]

Originally Posted by Jaspercat10

Wow what a shame you didn't enjoy dc it's such an expensive day ☹️ X

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I know I was a bit gutted as I wanted to love it, just definitely didn't feel it.

[Pussycat Doll]

😳 at your toe nail! Shame your day wasn't all you hoped for, I want to do it but hubby doesn't! It is a lot of money spent if you don't enjoy it. Xx

[i love jack]

Shame you didn’t enjoy the day and it’s such a lot of money. We went when it first opened and it was really quiet, I imagine it’s not now.

[Mortimer Mouse]

I know what you mean about the dolphin swim. It was nice, but not amazing. We're only doing the non-swim this year as we all enjoyed the rest of the park and can eat and drink our own body weight all day

[Excitedx4]

Originally Posted by Pussycat Doll

😳 at your toe nail! Shame your day wasn't all you hoped for, I want to do it but hubby doesn't! It is a lot of money spent if you don't enjoy it. Xx

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It really was, we only had 3 dolphin swims and even that was £560 on top of our Seaworld/Busch tickets.

Originally Posted by i love jack

Shame you didn’t enjoy the day and it’s such a lot of money. We went when it first opened and it was really quiet, I imagine it’s not now.

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It wasn't so much that it was busy, I can't really put my finger on it but the weather definitely put a dampener on it.

Originally Posted by Mortimer Mouse

I know what you mean about the dolphin swim. It was nice, but not amazing. We're only doing the non-swim this year as we all enjoyed the rest of the park and can eat and drink our own body weight all day

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The non swim tickets aren't too bad are they, think we paid about £50 for the non swim ticket.

[MinnieMrsA]

I have always dithered about buying DC tickets - glad I haven't now! Xx