Day With a Dolphin

Thanksgiving Day 2008

“Day with a Dolphin”

So my mom forgot Janet’s birthday back in June and asked me what Janet wanted. Well, one of the things Janet’s wanted since she was 8 was to swim with dolphins. So I said “she’s always wanted to swim with dolphins.”

Discovery Cove in Orlando, FL, is a fairly recent addition to the SeaWorld community. It ain’t cheap. Like $300 per person “ain’t cheap”. So Mom says she’ll take care of getting Janet in. I forget how long ago this was; obviously it was after Janet’s birthday but I don’t remember exactly how long after that Mom made the arrangements.

(I tried to put all the rest of this behind the cut. I THOUGHT it didn't work. Now I'm not sure. -JB)

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(this was written so long ago I copied it off my Livejournal page)

As for the arrangements, I was under the impression that Janet and my nephew Tyler were going to be the lucky two people until this past Wednesday night. Mom was under the impression that I knew I was the other person going. Janet… well, Janet knew she was swimming with dolphins, so getting anything coherent out of her about it was kinda doomed.

I didn’t have a great day at work Wednesday and I wasn’t in a great mood that night, and when we got there and I found out I was swimming with dolphins the next day I reacted pretty much like anybody with Asperger’s reacts when presented with something unexpected; I was grumpy. We REALLY could have used the $$ that Mom sank into this to buy fencing for the backyard; stupid next-door people (I will not call them neighbors) are crying and whining and complaining and Animal Control says we have to fence them in. Fine and dandy, but oh, look; the money I need to buy the fencing is tied up in the @#$!!! Privacy fence the LAST person that lived there basically made us put up to keep the cats out of HIS yard. So there’s $1500 wasted and I still owe Home Depot. Especially irritating when you find out that all we really needed to do was buy $450 worth of 6’ tall pvc-coated wire welded fence, and fence the back yard in with it, and voila, done. Noooo… gotta owe Home Depot at 22%.

So I’m in a “whatEVer” mood that night and the next morning. Mom said to give a complete report, though, since they’ve never been to Discovery Cove. So I borrow Janet’s notebook and start writing before we ever get anywhere near the dolphins. Keep in mind that with typical North Carolina punctuality, we left while it was cold and crappy and wet, and came back while it was cold and crappy and wet and rainy. Yay NC.

We have to be at the park at 0800. So we’ve had very little sleep when the cheerful 6 AM wakeup call hits.

0600: Wake up. In the words of Airman Cronauer, OMG it’s early.

0715: We arrive at Discovery Cove due to rampant paranoia.

0720: Processing. Feels like scheduling an operation. “here’s your badge, this is your number, this is your dolphin swim time (0920), this is where you go, don’t be late, blah blah blah, welcome to Discovery Cove, now get out of our way because you idiots are forty minutes early.” (no, this is not an actual quote.)

0725: “park doesn’t open till 8.” Twiddle, twiddle. Go outside, hear what has to be a dolphin barking. (turns out it almost certainly wasn’t. Probably one of the birds in the aviary. More on that later.)

0745: Janet gets all excited when they open the front door for a completely unrelated reason. Sit back down. 8AM means 8 AM. Poor Janet. Hehe

0750: crying child. Shoot it. Or feed it to the dolphins.

0756: the door opens again. Early morning fog off the water in the various lagoons. Janet goes all clicky with her camera.

0815: short tour. We beat the staff in, so we get the standard “oops, you’re not supposed to be here” speech. Found the lockers, stashed most of our stuff.

0820: breakfast. Florida apparently doesn’t believe in 2% or fatter milk so we’re stuck with 1%. But hey, the food was never supposed to be the high point of the day, right? Oh well. Dolphins can be seen in the distance, all else is academic.

0835: Making bet with myself on Janet getting a cheeseburger for lunch. How many times today are we going to use the phrase “For $300 a person they d**n well better (fill in the blank)” ?

0840: Janet hears the dolphins for the first time. Grinning like a 2 yr old.

0855: Wetsuit time. When you go in the locker room and you hear the recording of the lovely sound of the surf, the seagulls, the waves crashing, water rushing, …if you didn’t have to pee before that, you sure do now.

0900: They gave me a 2x wetsuit “because you’re tall.” Fools. I can’t get it over my shoulders. They give me a 3x. It fits. Barely. If you ever wonder what kind of shape you’re in, get into a wetsuit and see. Take pics, too, for blackmail.

0901: lots of people with no business in a wetsuit.

0910: “You know the difference between me and you? I make this look GOOD.” -Will Smith, “Men In Black”

0915: Janet’s silly purple pen doesn’t write worth crap. Swapping.

0920: Amusement among some women (staff members) that just about every guy came out with the wetsuit on backwards, i.e., with the zipper in front. They don’t get it. I said “ladies, it’s simple. No guy is ever going to turn to another guy in the bathroom and say “could you zip me up?” “

They thought that was funny.

0930: Ellyn did not buy me a waterproof watch.

0930: Ellyn did not buy me a waterproof watch.

0930: Ellyn did not buy me a waterproof watch.

(just kidding. Well she really didn’t buy a waterproof one, but nothing happened to the watch. Had to take it off to get in the water with the dolphins though, because if they see something you have that they like (jewelry, face masks, snorkel, watches, pretty much anything that isn’t nailed down) they will take it from you and use it to play “keep-away” with the trainers, who are understandably tired of that sort of game. The dolphins think it’s a hoot though.)

At this point the written record ends because you can’t easily take a notebook in the water with you. So the rest of this isn’t nearly as detailed.

We got in the water with a group of people who thankfully were actually there to swim with the dolphins and not just dorking around. We were introduced to one of our trainers, Amanda, and I think the other one’s name was Teresa. It started with a T, anyway. The usual “don’t try to do anything to or with the dolphin that we didn’t tell you to, or we’ll shoot you” speech. There are 40 dolphins in this pod, and we were introduced to Lester, the alpha dolphin. He’s 38 years old (as my mom gleefully pointed out, the same age I am) which is pretty darn unusual for a dolphin. Life expectancy in the wild is 25 yrs at most, so whatever Lester’s got going on, he’s got it going good. He’s missing some teeth, but it turns out that they don’t use them in captivity anyway, so he’s all good. He’s about 600# which doesn’t really matter since he doesn’t leave the water, but it’s helpful to know.

Amanda has Lester make several passes during which Lester gets petted and told how cute he is and etc by Janet and co. I’m busy asking the other trainer questions, so I get to pet him, but I’m still pretty much just here for the party. Everybody gets to give Lester a kiss. Ladies first. So I’m near the tail end which is fine.

I have to interrupt myself to explain some things about this procedure. The crew of people you’re with includes at least two photographers because DC isn’t stupid; they want you to spend MORE money (more than you’ve already spent, more than the GDP of some small countries if they can figure out ways to painlessly separate you from said money.) so they don’t allow you to bring cameras with you. They stand there and snap photos of you in embarrassing positions with a dolphin and then try to tell you how cute those poses are so you’ll spend gobs of cash on it. Clever of them. So their photographers basically take a couple of shots of the standard things: the kiss (you kiss the dolphin on the chin), the tow (the dolphin tows you a few yards), and the group shot (whoever you came with stands there with the dolphin while you all mug for the camera).

Apparently I don’t fit the standard procedure. Is anybody shocked?

So while I’m kissing Lester (and photoguy is snapping away), Amanda signals Lester to roll over on his back. I didn’t know she had signaled him; I thought he was just goofing off, and Amanda tells me to go ahead and pet his belly, so I do, and while I’m down there I give the dolphin a hug, which he let me do, so I thought Hey, that’s cool, and that’ll make a nice photo. Wow, I’m actually getting into this whole concept.

Then Lester tows us a few yards, and then the group shots, and then we all get out of the (72 degree, kinda chilly with the weather) water and go to the cabana and look at the cute pix that we’ve had taken of us.

Yup, there’s the kiss, yup, there’s the tow, yup, there’s the group shots…

…no shot of me hugging Lester.

I look at the photoguy (he’s standing right there shilling for the company so we’ll spend more $) and say “why didn’t you shoot me hugging Lester?”

Dig this answer, people… they’re only supposed to shoot the standard stock stuff, or else he might (OMG NO!!) shoot something nonstandard, and then of course everybody else will want one, blah, blah, blah…

Well now I’m disappointed. And I tell him so. I said “look, you have this super-dooper camera that takes God knows how many shots per second, just hold the d**n trigger down and let ME sort through 300 pix, and that’s fine with me.”

I give the guy credit. He could tell I was disappointed. He offered to get his manager who came over maybe 30 seconds later. Manager Mike.

Lest anyone think I’m disparaging either the photoguy (whose name I never learned) or Mike by calling him Manager Mike, I’m not. The photo guy was quite sincere and apologetic, and Mike, well, Mike gets himself nominated for sainthood by the end of this story. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So Mike comes over, and I explain the whole thing to him, and he agrees with me; it’s sort of silly to think that nothing extraordinary is ever going to happen and that hey, the photo people might wanna make sure they catch it if it does, because 1) that’s what memories are made of, and 2) for $300/person, they d**n well better (fill in the blank).

Mike apologizes profusely, and I tell him it’s no big deal, and he can tell I’m lying through my teeth. So he goes to work. I don’t know any of the details other than that he went to his boss, who agreed with the two of us. This was a little after 10. So keep all this in mind… I didn’t know I was even going to BE there until the night before, and my day’s been pretty much shot because of some stupid corporate policy. It doesn’t really matter what other neat stuff this place might have; I’m grumpy now. Not terribly grumpy, but if I had to rate the day so far I’d put it around a 5. Might as well have stayed home; it’s cheaper.

So we leave the dolphin lagoon and go pick up masks and snorkels (you keep the snorkels when you leave) and we head over to the Tropical River. Tell ya what, the Tropical River should be required by law to be built, one every couple of hundred miles around the world. Having a bad day? Grab a mask and snorkel and get in 85 degree water and just float and watch the world go by. It was WARM which doesn’t sound like much in Florida but it was a little on the chilly side for Florida, so the Tropical River hit the spot. BTW the Tropical River is freshwater. So (most) guys sink and (most) girls float. No shock there and the fact that the water is warm (I know, this sounds silly for Florida, doesn’t it? But it can get just chilly enough that you’re glad to be in 85 degree water.) mitigates the fact that you sink.

We float once around that and then decide it’s lunch time. Did I mention that all the food and drinks (and beer if you want it, since Anheuser-Busch owns the place) is free once you’re in the door? Lunch was …well, I was expecting better. But they can’t spice anything one way when the likelihood is that somebody else wants it another way, so the food was generic. I see I’ve left out everything about breakfast other than that it happened. Generic continental breakfast, nothing hot, but again, you’re not supposed to be porking out at breakfast. So no big deal. It was there and it was generically edible. Lunch is pretty much the same way, but again, awesome food isn’t really the focus of this day.

So we’re finishing lunch.

I have to interrupt myself again here. Flash back to the photo booth. The BASIC package for pix is $60. That’s right, $60 for FOUR pix we didn’t really care about. So we just told them we’d think about it and pick them up later. We were lying through our teeth; the generic pix they shot were…well…generic. You could have photoshopped anybody in our places. Not worth anything to either of us. Again, shoulda stayed home, at least for me. Janet’s having a good time but she can tell my day is about a 5 so far.

So the dolphin thing was bland, the food was bland, the pix were bland, the tropical river was spiffy but not worth $300…getting the picture? No pun intended.

Then Mike found us. Dumb luck, too. He’d been looking for me (ok, I’m fairly easy to spot, especially when there are only 600 people on the site instead of the typical 1200 or the maximum 2000) but he’d just about given up when he found us eating the uninspired lunch.

So far as far as I could tell he’d been sympathetic but that was all. Then he says “I talked to my boss, he agrees with us, and we want to make it up to you. Can you be at the dolphin lagoon at 2:15 for a reshoot?”

Sure. Can you make sure Lester’s there? I didn’t really want to fake it with another dolphin.

Probably not, he says, because they have fairly strict rotations, but he’ll do what he can. Look for him, Margaret, or Kim at 2:15 at the dolphin lagoon. OK, we’ll be there. It’s currently 11:50 so we’ve still got almost 2:30 to kill. I go over to Janet and say “honey, get up, we’ve gotta get a move on…we’ve only got 2 hours and 25 minutes left.” Hehe

Sadistic every so often, that’s me. Of course I realize at this point that I’ve basically committed us to spending $60 on the basic photo package since they’re going to the trouble to reshoot. Oh well. I hope they’re worth it. (DUM DUM DUUUMMMM!!! *ominous music in the background*)

So we go to the Coral Reef Lagoon. I was expecting “walk around the outside, look at all the pretty fish, ooh, neat, move on”. Because there’s a window in the Tropical River where you can see into the Coral Reef.

Oh no, people; once again, for $300/person, you GET IN THE CORAL REEF. With your mask. And snorkel. And wetsuit. Because it’s about 72 degrees in there. Not warm if the day isn’t warm. And the day wasn’t warm; it was about 70. And you get on your hands and knees and float (because the Coral Reef and the Ray Lagoon and the Dolphin Lagoon are salt water. You couldn’t sink there unassisted if your life depended on it) and look down and see large tropical fish. And ooh, neat. And then a little stingray swims past you and you think ooh, neat. And then a bigger one swims past you and you reach out and just barely touch it because it’s out of your arm’s reach. And then a bigger one swims past you and you think wow, that’s a big stingray, but it’s ok because their stingers are clipped roughly once a month and it’s ok. And then you float across a high spot, and you look down, and fifteen feet to the bottom you see HOLY $$##^^**!!! Stingrays oh, roughly 6’ to 8’ across. But they’re just lying there on the bottom and they’re nocturnal and oh, ok, that’s all right, but WOW!! (did you know that when you yell HOLY S*** into your snorkel that people can hear you under water and they can pretty well tell exactly what you said just by the intonation? Try it sometime) And then you bump into another glass wall and on the other side is a batch of barracuda (4’ to 6’ long) looking at you with eyes that say “be glad there’s this stupid wall between us, stupid.” And you’re busy going “yes sir. I am very glad that there’s this stupid wall between us.” And then you turn around and swim another direction. And now you know that there are glass walls between you and the predators, which is as it should be, but Janet hasn’t figured it out yet, and swims right up to a shark. How about that? The instinctive EEEEEK!!! reaction right out of the movies. Levitating backwards in the water. Oh, there’s a wall there, so it’s all right. Swim some more. If you want to put your feet down in here you should definitely fan the water with your hands and make sure there’s not an innocent stingray taking a nap wherever you want to put your feet. Not that it’s likely but why take chances?

So we get out of the Coral Reef some time later and we’ve still got plenty of time to kill, so we go over to the Ray Lagoon. Janet coos to these silly little stingrays like they’re kittens. And they are kinda cute, at least a few of them are eager to meet newcomers. Several of the little darlings are pregnant, so you can’t float; they want you to have your feet down at all times. Janet took lots of pix which you will doubtless see later.

I’ve left out the Aviary completely because it’s a separate tale all its own. But the short version is that the Tropical River floats around all three of these areas and you can get out of the River and walk straight into the Aviary which is completely enclosed, has many, many birds, all of which are hand-raised and therefore relatively fearless, and they believe that you were put on this earth to wait hand and foot on their little feathery desires. And you’re OK with that because they’re relatively fearless. And there are two adorable miniature deer of some sort that LOVE having their chins scratched where they can’t reach. Like cats only cuter. The birds…what can I say? They’re fearless. They end up becoming quite demanding. Five of the feathery little darlings hanging off my wetsuit waiting for me to catch up and FEED THEM NOW DANGIT. One standing on my hat waiting for me to FEED IT NOW DANGIT. And on and on and on. I’m not even going to mention the fact that we thought the aviary was one smallish area only to be told no, there are two more areas roughly the same size, go through those doors. Aha, more birds waiting for me to catch up and FEED THEM NOW DANGIT. But really quite endearing.

But the Aviary happened after the reshoot so remember, I’m impressed by the Coral Reef and the Tropical River but I still haven’t really gotten what I (didn’t even originally plan to) came for and I’m still relatively grumpy about it.

So we eventually wind up back at the Dolphin Lagoon at 1:45. I see people who apparently just wanted to waste lots of money who paid their way into the park and then lay down on the beach furniture and sleep and tan. Must be nice to have that much disposable income.

We sat around chatting with the trainers and staff and etc while a couple of dolphins are dorking around in the lagoon ten feet away. They’re not stupid; they know we’re not trainers and we therefore do not have fish, so all the patting on the water and cooing at the dolphins is useless. But they’re still about ten feet away being…well…dolphins. Janet’s happy. Which, after all, was the point of this whole clambake.

Then we explain to the trainers that we’re looking for Margaret or Kim and Amanda knows the whole story because she was my trainer that morning and before I can say “boo” she says “let me get you a dolphin.” I say “can you get Lester?”

She says “nope, sorry, they’re all on a fairly set rotation, but tell ya what, this is Hutch, Lester’s son.”

Hutch swims up grinning. Of course he can’t help it but (as Amanda and I agreed) human beings anthropomorphize every animal in sight, so Hutch is grinning. I can only imagine the conversation that took place between Lester and Hutch that day.

“so, dad, how’s it going?”

“well, son, pretty well, but you know I’m not quite what I used to be. So today I’m passing you the torch. Don’t worry, you know all the tricks. See that big guy over there? He and I had a few moments of fun but the pic people blew it, so we’re gonna do it again. But I can’t go, so you’re gonna have to. Ready? Go be cute. And oh BTW don’t tow him if you can avoid it… he’s heavy.”

“ok, Dad.”

So Hutch swims up. Amanda has him roll over and I give him a hug.

Now remember what I said about Lester? Lester was a very accommodating fellow. Hutch? Hutch apparently felt very, very bad that my experience wasn’t all it could be. So he rolls over on his back, looks at me, and starts laughing.

Yeah, ok, the dolphin rolled over and opened his mouth and wasn’t actually laughing. Anthropomorphization, remember? Shut up.

And Margaret got to work with her camera. I never met Margaret but I’m nominating her for sainthood right alongside Mike and Amanda and Hutch and whoever else had anything to do with this. Because at that perfect (Janet calls it the “money shot”) moment, I looked over and saw Hutch laughing, and started laughing myself, and Margaret nailed it to the wall with her camera. If this isn’t Discovery Cove’s next promo shot, it won’t be because I didn’t try hard enough to sell it.

Now most of you know me reasonably well and you know I’m not crazy about having my picture taken; I don’t MIND it but I also don’t really care about the result.

Discovery Cove for Two: $600

Gas to FL and Back: $100

Meals, gratuities, misc: $80

Picture Pack, Discovery Cove, Basic Package: $60

One (1) Resultant Picture: Priceless