Questions re: Dolphin Encounter and Dolphin swim off Carnival Inspiration...

[igitur]

We're trying to plan an excursion for our January trip with our 6 and 8 year olds. My daughter (8) has always wanted to swim with the dolphins (dh and I were in Cancun several years ago and visited Xel-Ha and we told her about it.) For 4.5 hours, the excurions is $165pp. Sounds like it's at the marina in Puerto Aventuras and includes a trip to Discovery Beach.

 

Has anyone done this excursion? Sounds pretty pricey but I'm leary of booking something on our own since our time there is 9:30 a.m. - 6:30 p.m.

 

Any tips or suggestions would be very much appreciated.

 

Thanks so much!

 

Deb

[scooby91287]

:p Hey Deb,

 

Just to let you know, my family of 6 - one uncle, mother, father and 3 kids ages 14, 11 and 8 did the 3 hour encounter and had a great time. This place is super and I would highly recommend it. I originally booked the dolphin swim through carnival, but I then went to www.dolphindiscovery.com web site and found out that for $15 more we could do the 3 hour encounter and snorkel with the mantitees, play with the sea lion and then swim with the dolphins. I instant messaged with the person there on that site to find out the times available and to make sure it would fit in our time table. They were very helpful and answered all my questions ( I too was a little leary about setting this up and paying over $1,000 to a site I had never used before). Had no problems.

 

We were docked at Calica from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., did the dolphin swim from 11:00 - 2:00 p.m. We booked with Edventure tours and they took us snorkeling in the morning at a saltwater/freshwater lagoon before we went to the dolphin swim and they got us back to the boat on time. No problem with Carlos driving (we had also done a tour with them the day before, ferrying over from Cozumel).

 

Again, I can't say enough good about dolphin discovery there at Playa Del Carmen. They went out of there way to help my 14 yr old who had been injured the day before and was not suppose to get his foot wet. They let him sit on the steps at the mantitee pool so he could feed and pet a mantitee. They let him sit on some rocks so the sea lion could come to him there. They even brought a plastic bag and taped it around the top so he could get in the water for a short time with the dolphins. We did more in the 3 hours than I expected and they certainly were wonderful hosts.