Florida Questions

[musicmummy]

Hi. were going back to Florida again soon and are lucky enough to have booked the swim with Dolphins at Discovery cove. Although both my son and myself both swim, neither of us like being out of our depth. im 5ft 6 hes 4ft 7. is this going to be a problem? also. whats the duty free rules at the moment concerning liquids such as perfume.

[Buenchico]

The Florida Parks website states that you first get to know your dolphin by wading into shallow water, then go into deeper water for the swim. So, I doubt that you'll ever be far from somewhere within your depth. Additionally, while there's a minimum age for the experience (which is only 6), there's nothing which states that you have to be confident swimmers. If it's suitable for 6-year-olds, I'm sure that you won't have anything to worry about:
http://floridaparks.co.uk/Discovery_Cove/swimm ing_with_dolphins.html

The current security rules, for cabin baggage on all flights departing from EU airports, can be found here:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/transportforyou/airtrave l/airportsecurity

The rules for flights departing from the USA are here:
http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/prohibi ted/permitted-prohibited-items.shtm

If you need to know the restrictions on what you can bring back to the UK, without incurring tax or duty, see here:
http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebAp p/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_page Label=pageTravel_ShowContent&id=HMCE_PROD_0102 20&propertyType=document

Chris

[musicmummy]

excellent Chris thank you. K.

[handygran]

We went last year and you won,t have a problem at all. i don't like out of my depth and my grandaughter is only 7 but you stand in one place for about half an hour in shallow water and interact with the dolphin . Then someone assists you out into slightly deeper water and you hold onto the dolphin and it swims back to shallow water with you. Fantastic. Have a great time and enjoy.

[scoobydooby]

There is a snorkelling area however, which has an island in the middle (that's the best way I can describe it). It contains sharks (behind glass at the bottom) and rays. I had only just leant to swim and saw lots of children further out with life jackets on so I thought it would be shallow. I swam off a rock but then all of a sudden I was looking down in water that (I later discovered) was about 18 feet deep!! At that moment I thought my time was up so I closed my eyes, turned myself around and swam until my knees grazed the rock I'd swam from - just to be sure I was on terra firma! Quite funny now but very scary at the time. Make sure you ask about the depth of different areas as you'll only be with dolphins for a very small fraction of your day. It's brilliant though - lovely white sandy beaches and they only admit a certain number of people per day so no queueing and plenty of room to have a wonderfully chilled-out day.