Disneyworld 2009 - Part IV

August 3-11 2009

Day 5 and 7

On day 5, we went to Discovery Cove. We were all looking forward to going there. The park had a dolphin encounter, something that Michelle has been wanting to do for a very long time. The park also has coral reefs and tropical rivers where you could swim with fishes and go exploring. I was looking forward to that since I like swimming with the fishes....but I usually am weary of, you know, sharks and stuff. No sharks at this park. :)

We bought an underwater camera, so I have no digital pics of any of the underwater scenes, including a close up of a school of mean looking barracudas. I probably should develop that sometime soon. But I did take a bunch of pictures of the dolphin encounter.

Michelle being pulled by Flipper

Discovery Cove was pretty expensive. Around $200 per person. I initially thought that was a bit steep, but after seeing them having so much fun with the dolphins, I decided it was well worth it. One of the other good thing about the park is that they only let around 1000 people into the park each day. Once they hit the limit, they do not allow anyone else in. So we didn't feel crowded in or rushed while we were there and were free to roam about and do whatever we wanted. Also all the food and drink is included with the entry fee. They have a nice size dining area where you could order whatever you wanted whenever you wanted. The food was actually really good, like high end hotel quality. And since the park is owned by Anheuser Busch, all the beer was free too.

By day 7 we had done everything that we had planned on doing and then some. So we decided to take in something a bit different.

If you are in Florida, you have to see some gators, and Gatorland seemed like a good place to do it. They had a pretty cool show with some huge gators leaping out of the water chomping down on whole chickens. They also sold hot dogs that you could feed to the gators that were living around the park. We got pretty close to them and let me tell you, those suckers were huge.

Our Orlando trip was totally awesome. Even though we've been to Disneyland a gazillion times, Disneyworld was a very unique experience. I'm really glad we came.