Tag Archives: discovery cove

My 2011 Summer Vacation Review

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Summer Vacation Review Part 1

First we stayed in Hilton Grand Vacation Suites at SeaWorld, and while it was an older hotel, it was still pretty nice.  What was really great though was that across the street was the SeaWorld parking lot!  Talk about close to the action!

SeaWorld wasn’t exciting for me, but I grew up with it…  But my kids loved it, and my daughter said it was the best vacation ever for her (she loved dolphins and orcas).

Next we went to Discovery Cove with was just a little further down the street from our hotel too!  We loved being so close to the action and even at a good price too since the hotel was only about $130 a night!

Discovery Cove was a good resort and fun.  They put some time into making it look cool, and the kids loved it.  It’s the dolphin ride that they will both remember though.  I’m glad I have it on film!

Summer Vacation Review Part 2

The Captiva Island (a sister island to Sanibel Island) part of our vacation we very interesting and went at a much slower pace, and by slower…  I mean really slow!

The island was beautiful and the sunset was awesome, but restaurants close on Sunday!?!  Yep, that’s right, the restaurants are closed on Sunday!  We had to drive to Sanibel Island to find an open restaurant.  During the weekdays, the restaurants and bars close after 11:00pm!  This is a far cry from Myrtle Beach!

My son didn’t get stung by any jellyfish this year, but he didn’t go very deep into the ocean either though.

The highlight of the vacation for me was just hanging out with friends and family, chilling by the pool and watching the sunset go down!

My vacation is coming to a conclusion, soon I’ll be back to my normal middle class lifestyle.

But it was a great time all around!

MR

 

Swimming With Dolphins On Vacation

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Both of my kids love dolphins!

dolphin

Awesome Dolphins

So this year my wife found a package were the family can “swim with dolphins” and the go to Sea World the next day during our Florida vacation.  Needless to say, this package is expensive.

Since both of my kids are still relatively young, a requirement in the deal was that at least 1 adult had to also swim with the dolphins too.  After a talk, my wife said she would like to do it, so we agreed that she was definitely going to be the one to swim with the dolphins too.

Because of the high cost, I chose not to do the “swim with the dolphins” activity.  While I like dolphins too, but by not going I will shave an additional $150 off of the price for the experience.  Obviously, the decision was purely financial in nature, but I have to wonder, is this one of those missed opportunities in life that I will regret later because I’m being too frugal?

After a few weeks of thinking about it, I hate to say it but I’m sure that this is one of those experience that I will miss in life because I’m trying to save a buck.  I would now like to reconsider and update the experience so that I too could swim with the dolphins, but the event needs to be scheduled because they only have so many people swim with the dolphins per day.  So even though I changed my mind, I doubt that I will be able to upgrade my time there to include the “swimming with dolphins” element too (I still get to snorkel though).

I don’t see us doing this again in the future, so I’m afraid that I just lost out on a wonderful experience for $150 extra…

What would have you have done?  I’m sure I’ll still have a great time either way…  Later, after my vacation, I will have a follow up post on this experience from my wife and kid’s perspective.

Bests,

MR