Dolphin Swim

The dolphin swim at Discovery Cove was a definite highlight of our vacation.  There are three pods of dolphins and each have their own lagoon.  We were in the lagoon with the Sand Dollar pod, which was the only all-female group.  Within the lagoon, guests are put into small groups and paired with a trainer.  Only positive reinforcement (usually snacks) is used, so dolphins can choose whether or not to interact with a group.  Yoko was the name of the dolphin that came to interact with our group, and she acted just like you would expect a dolphin named "Yoko" to act.  There were some behaviors that she was happy to do (like the deep water tow) and some she did not want to do (like receive any type of attention from us).  She would come over for a little bit and then randomly swim off to hang out with other dolphins.  At one point she started jumping around in the middle of the lagoon.  Because Yoko was a bit of a diva, other dolphins were asked to come over so that we could do the various interactions with them.  We ended up interacting with five different dolphins.  It was kind of cool to see how the dolphins had different personalities.  Some of them were very affectionate and seemed to like having us love on them.  The trainer told us a lot of information about the dolphins and about Sea World's work with dolphins.  We were able to touch all of the dolphins, kiss one, feed them snacks, and do hand gestures to communicate different behaviors. For the grand finale, we swam out into the deep part of the lagoon and were towed back by Yoko (it was the one thing she liked doing).  We couldn't bring our camera into the lagoon with us, but they had a photographer present to take pictures of us.  This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so of course we bought the photos.  And since I paid quite a bit for them, I'm going to share a lot of them.