woodys_girl
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2022
I just wanted to write a quick summary of our experience with The Dolphin Experience at Chankanaab in Cozumel since I couldn’t find a ton of information on it ahead of time—particularly the experience with using a Groupon.
At the last minute, maybe a couple weeks before our cruise, my kids decided they really, really wanted to swim with the dolphins. I looked into doing the excursion in Costa Maya (our one other port besides Cozumel), but it was sold out through Royal. I contacted the Dolphin Experience and asked about booking directly since I didn’t see a way to do that on the website, and they told me that the Costa Maya location could only be booked through the cruise lines.
So I did a little more googling to see what our options were and stumbled upon a Groupon deal for Dolphin Discovery locations in Mexico and the Caribbean. I chatted with Dolphin Discovery about the Cozumel location and while they discouraged me from buying a Groupon (“you’ll get a bad time” and “we can’t guarantee your party will stay together”) the deal was much better than what they would offer me as Groupon had a 20% off sale on top of the usual deal. It is true that they will only offer you the 1pm or 2pm time slots, while if you book direct you also have the choice of 10am and 11am, but as we were close in, I was only going to get 2pm whether I booked direct or not as the other slots were full. I purchased the Groupons and followed the instructions to reserve our time slot which was fairly easy to do. I was slightly concerned about the 2pm time slot since we had a 4:15pm all aboard, but I was told the experience only lasted 50 minutes and Chankabaab is a short taxi ride away from the port.
When we arrived in port at Cozumel we walked to the end of the pier and took a taxi to Chankanaab. It was $30 for the 6 of us. We had to check in at a desk outside the park to get our admission bands and then again inside to get our Dophin Swim bands. At the second check in, they gave us a 1:25 time which proved to be very helpful as it took nearly two hours from when we showed up for our swim and when I received the code for our photos. There was a lot of waiting involved in the process so I could see this time being shorter or longer depending on the day. There were 7 ships in port the day we were there.
Also at the second check in they will try to sell you the photo package. You have probably heard if you’ve looked into the Dolphin Swims at all that the photos are very expensive. You can buy a single photo of a single person for $40 each, you can pre-buy the photo package online for $50 for each person if you buy direct, or they will try to sell you the package for $70/person when you arrive. I was told that was non-negotiable because you get extra benefits if you buy the photos ahead of time. The benefits I was quoted included—family photo with the dolphin (they will NOT take a group shot of you with the dolphin if you don’t all have the package), family photo with the manatee, family photo with the sea lion, and a free taxi back to your ship or hotel. I was told they might negotiate the photo package price with you afterwards, but that you would not get the benefits (family photos). Not wanting to spend time negotiating when we had such a tight window to get back to the ship and remembering how much I saved using Groupons I decided to bite the bullet and buy the photo package. The photos were actually more than I paid for the swim, but if you look at it as a lump sum that included the swim, admission (beach, pool, sea lion show, etc), lunch (which we didn’t really have time to eat, but still) and the photos it was about the same as paying through the cruise ship and the cruise ship excursion doesn’t include the photos. So I’ll still call it a win even though it was an ungodly amount of money for photos.
We played on the beach (small, and if your main objective is beach, I’d choose another location, but it was good enough for the kids) and snorkeled (our own equipment) before seeing the sea lion show. It was cute enough—I like sea lions—but I couldn’t understand the person speaking as it was primarily in Spanish. We and several other families took our photo afterwards.
The lines for lunch were long at this time (a little after noon) because I’m sure the people who went through the cruise ship were on a tight window and needed to eat lunch then so we decided to spend a little more time at the beach. We left a few minutes early for our dolphin swim to get my MIL (not swimming) a table next to the buffet so she could have food and drink while we swam. By this time (a little after one) there was little line at the buffet. The kids hopped in the adjacent pool while we ordered some (included) drinks—alcohol was super weak and the kids had soda which they chugged before we went to our swim.
We went to our meeting location and waited for a few minutes before someone came and directed us to life jackets and a second meeting point. There they put us in our swim groups (ours was our family of 5 and a family of 3), and we waited some more. Then we walked out onto the docks and waited some more. A couple of notes here: Wear sunscreen and a rash guard and you might even consider a hat (not sure if they would allow that or not). Somewhere on the website I read that you weren’t supposed to wear sunscreen in the water with the dolphins, but you are in the sun for a long time and no one said or asked anything about that when we were there. Also keep your sandals on—there is a place to leave shoes on the dock and the ground is hot. You won’t be allowed to bring any bags—you’ll need to use the free lockers. I was allowed to wear my prescription glasses—I don’t know if they would have said anything or allowed them if they were sunglasses.
After a long wait we were directed to our area and got in the water. You walk along a platform that was pretty deep. My 11 year old could stand, but my 9 year old seemed to be bobbing. I held my 7 year old the whole time which made it really difficult with the waves. Meeting the dolphin was really cool, but it felt a little rushed. Maybe that was because I was trying to keep tabs, making sure each of my kids got to do each of the activities and making sure our photos all got taken. But the kids had a good time and it was unanimously their favorite part of our whole trip so we’ll consider it a win.
After we got out of the water we stood for a long time waiting to see the manatees. There was very little communication here—just a wait here sort of thing, but finally we got in the water with the manatees. I will note here that when I was chatting with Dolphin Discovery they “include a free manatee interaction” if you purchase direct, but I did not purchase direct and I did not see anyone not doing the manatee interaction so I’m pretty sure everyone gets to do that. Here you also walk along a platform while the trainer lures the manatees back and forth with lettuce and you pet the manatees.
After we got out I had to choose which photos I wanted (even though I paid for the package, there was no way to just say give me all the photos). My husband took the kids to grab something from the buffet real quick while I went through the tedious process of selecting the photos. In the end, we got maybe 130 photos (5 people) though many of those were just different versions of the same shot. The photos seemed to be good quality. I would recommend buying the photos because we did get some good shots and there is no other way to get photos as phones and cameras are not allowed at the experience. By the way, these are all digital photos—if you purchase you are given a code to download all the photos to your phone/computer.
My two less frugal children had to buy really expensive stuffed animals in the gift shop and then we finally headed back to the ship. There were taxis waiting and the trip was pretty short—maybe 10 minutes-ish. We ended up being able to walk back without rushing, though generally I like to leave a little more cushion.
Overall, we liked the excursion and would recommend it and I would not hesitate to buy a Groupon for the experience again. Please let me know if you have any questions. I’m happy to help.
At the last minute, maybe a couple weeks before our cruise, my kids decided they really, really wanted to swim with the dolphins. I looked into doing the excursion in Costa Maya (our one other port besides Cozumel), but it was sold out through Royal. I contacted the Dolphin Experience and asked about booking directly since I didn’t see a way to do that on the website, and they told me that the Costa Maya location could only be booked through the cruise lines.
So I did a little more googling to see what our options were and stumbled upon a Groupon deal for Dolphin Discovery locations in Mexico and the Caribbean. I chatted with Dolphin Discovery about the Cozumel location and while they discouraged me from buying a Groupon (“you’ll get a bad time” and “we can’t guarantee your party will stay together”) the deal was much better than what they would offer me as Groupon had a 20% off sale on top of the usual deal. It is true that they will only offer you the 1pm or 2pm time slots, while if you book direct you also have the choice of 10am and 11am, but as we were close in, I was only going to get 2pm whether I booked direct or not as the other slots were full. I purchased the Groupons and followed the instructions to reserve our time slot which was fairly easy to do. I was slightly concerned about the 2pm time slot since we had a 4:15pm all aboard, but I was told the experience only lasted 50 minutes and Chankabaab is a short taxi ride away from the port.
When we arrived in port at Cozumel we walked to the end of the pier and took a taxi to Chankanaab. It was $30 for the 6 of us. We had to check in at a desk outside the park to get our admission bands and then again inside to get our Dophin Swim bands. At the second check in, they gave us a 1:25 time which proved to be very helpful as it took nearly two hours from when we showed up for our swim and when I received the code for our photos. There was a lot of waiting involved in the process so I could see this time being shorter or longer depending on the day. There were 7 ships in port the day we were there.
Also at the second check in they will try to sell you the photo package. You have probably heard if you’ve looked into the Dolphin Swims at all that the photos are very expensive. You can buy a single photo of a single person for $40 each, you can pre-buy the photo package online for $50 for each person if you buy direct, or they will try to sell you the package for $70/person when you arrive. I was told that was non-negotiable because you get extra benefits if you buy the photos ahead of time. The benefits I was quoted included—family photo with the dolphin (they will NOT take a group shot of you with the dolphin if you don’t all have the package), family photo with the manatee, family photo with the sea lion, and a free taxi back to your ship or hotel. I was told they might negotiate the photo package price with you afterwards, but that you would not get the benefits (family photos). Not wanting to spend time negotiating when we had such a tight window to get back to the ship and remembering how much I saved using Groupons I decided to bite the bullet and buy the photo package. The photos were actually more than I paid for the swim, but if you look at it as a lump sum that included the swim, admission (beach, pool, sea lion show, etc), lunch (which we didn’t really have time to eat, but still) and the photos it was about the same as paying through the cruise ship and the cruise ship excursion doesn’t include the photos. So I’ll still call it a win even though it was an ungodly amount of money for photos.
We played on the beach (small, and if your main objective is beach, I’d choose another location, but it was good enough for the kids) and snorkeled (our own equipment) before seeing the sea lion show. It was cute enough—I like sea lions—but I couldn’t understand the person speaking as it was primarily in Spanish. We and several other families took our photo afterwards.
The lines for lunch were long at this time (a little after noon) because I’m sure the people who went through the cruise ship were on a tight window and needed to eat lunch then so we decided to spend a little more time at the beach. We left a few minutes early for our dolphin swim to get my MIL (not swimming) a table next to the buffet so she could have food and drink while we swam. By this time (a little after one) there was little line at the buffet. The kids hopped in the adjacent pool while we ordered some (included) drinks—alcohol was super weak and the kids had soda which they chugged before we went to our swim.
We went to our meeting location and waited for a few minutes before someone came and directed us to life jackets and a second meeting point. There they put us in our swim groups (ours was our family of 5 and a family of 3), and we waited some more. Then we walked out onto the docks and waited some more. A couple of notes here: Wear sunscreen and a rash guard and you might even consider a hat (not sure if they would allow that or not). Somewhere on the website I read that you weren’t supposed to wear sunscreen in the water with the dolphins, but you are in the sun for a long time and no one said or asked anything about that when we were there. Also keep your sandals on—there is a place to leave shoes on the dock and the ground is hot. You won’t be allowed to bring any bags—you’ll need to use the free lockers. I was allowed to wear my prescription glasses—I don’t know if they would have said anything or allowed them if they were sunglasses.
After a long wait we were directed to our area and got in the water. You walk along a platform that was pretty deep. My 11 year old could stand, but my 9 year old seemed to be bobbing. I held my 7 year old the whole time which made it really difficult with the waves. Meeting the dolphin was really cool, but it felt a little rushed. Maybe that was because I was trying to keep tabs, making sure each of my kids got to do each of the activities and making sure our photos all got taken. But the kids had a good time and it was unanimously their favorite part of our whole trip so we’ll consider it a win.
After we got out of the water we stood for a long time waiting to see the manatees. There was very little communication here—just a wait here sort of thing, but finally we got in the water with the manatees. I will note here that when I was chatting with Dolphin Discovery they “include a free manatee interaction” if you purchase direct, but I did not purchase direct and I did not see anyone not doing the manatee interaction so I’m pretty sure everyone gets to do that. Here you also walk along a platform while the trainer lures the manatees back and forth with lettuce and you pet the manatees.
After we got out I had to choose which photos I wanted (even though I paid for the package, there was no way to just say give me all the photos). My husband took the kids to grab something from the buffet real quick while I went through the tedious process of selecting the photos. In the end, we got maybe 130 photos (5 people) though many of those were just different versions of the same shot. The photos seemed to be good quality. I would recommend buying the photos because we did get some good shots and there is no other way to get photos as phones and cameras are not allowed at the experience. By the way, these are all digital photos—if you purchase you are given a code to download all the photos to your phone/computer.
My two less frugal children had to buy really expensive stuffed animals in the gift shop and then we finally headed back to the ship. There were taxis waiting and the trip was pretty short—maybe 10 minutes-ish. We ended up being able to walk back without rushing, though generally I like to leave a little more cushion.
Overall, we liked the excursion and would recommend it and I would not hesitate to buy a Groupon for the experience again. Please let me know if you have any questions. I’m happy to help.
