Loved our dolphin & stingray excursion!

[kctwinmommy]

We did the Carnival excursion on our cruise a few weeks ago and we had a great time. It was a very windy day, I'm not gonna lie. I had heard a few others onboard the next day say that their excursion (similar, but different one booked) had been canceled the night before. So we were lucky that we got to go. We had to wait for our tour bus once we got onto the pier, there was also a group of cruisers from an MSC ship that went with us, but each ship had their own small buses to go to the yacht club for the stingray. We got out there, it was about a 20 minute ride or so. Once there, we were all on the same boat to go out to the stingray bay area.

 

Again, the day was windy for sure, so it made for a little bit of a bumpy ride out there. I'd say it was about a 30 minute boat ride out to the stingray area. There were already 3-4 other boats out there too. Each boat comes out, gives people a chance to get out with the stingrays, then head out, so it's kind of a rotating thing. Our boat anchored, and then people were able to start going off the ladder on the back into the water. Because it's sandbar, you can walk along the whole thing. There are a ton of stingrays too! One of the guides did get a ray and was able to hold it for awhile so people could pet it. They also bring it up for kisses and backrubs! LOL! Again, because it was a windy day, a few people had a hard time moving through the water, and it was a little difficult getting back on the boat for a few.

 

Once we were back on the boat, we headed back to the dock and then back on our buses to get to the dolphin adventure. It wasn't that far of a ride over to that. Once there, they directed us to the workers there. It was nice and easy, they put us into groups of about 7-10 people (we had 7 in ours, our family of 3 and another family of 4). They have each small group go into one of the smaller pools, that have 2 dolphins in there. The trainer introduced us to the 2 dolphins (we had a 23 year old one and a 2 year old one!). They give each person a chance to swim with the dolphin (boogie board, with the fins, and then interact with "dancing" and kisses). We didn't have time to look at the pictures in the building afterwards, as we were tight on time. Our back on board time was like 3:00. Now, we were on a Carnival excursion, so we weren't too concerned. We got back a few minutes after that, and there was a long line of people waiting for ferries to go back to the ship.

 

I just bought some photos yesterday, and the only "complaint" is that they put such a large watermark over the entire picture, that it can be hard to see some of them. But we picked out 10 of them. That's the other thing, at a certain point (I didn't look exactly what cut offs they used), they actually get cheaper. It was like $35/one, $70/two, but then I noticed my cart said 7-10 pictures $120. So basically our 10 pics ended up being $12 each, a better deal for sure!

 

View from the boat at the stingray sandbar

 

 

Kissing the stingray

 

 

Stingray back rubs

 

 

I had fun!

 

 

Our son was a bit shocked at how fast they went!

 

 

Getting some dancing in.

 

 

Getting a kiss!

Edited April 26, 2022 by kctwinmommy