Yesterday, I took the Aqua Tour at the Living Seas at Epcot. I highly recommend this to anyone! It starts off with a behind-the-scenes look of the aquarium facility, including the manatee and dolphin habitats. The tour also includes about forty minutes of scuba-assisted snorkeling in the giant tank - and I mean giant, Spaceship Earth (the huge "golf ball" ride) could fit in the tank with seven feet all around to swim in. Scuba-assisted snorkeling means that you are provided with a small compressed air tank and regulator instead of a snorkel - which is awesome for those of us that always manage to get water in the snorkel tube.
So we get suited up in the provided wet suits, and the first issue arises. As I put my contacts in so that I can see all the fishes, the contact rips IN my eye, leaving a small piece which refuses to come out. So, feeling like a one-eyed pirate, I finish getting ready. You're probably wondering why I didn't just wear my glasses - no jewelery or glasses are allowed in the tank. Plus, if you've ever had contacts and lost one during the day you know that you can trick yourself into only really seeing out of one eye. As we walk to the tank though, I finally get the small piece out of my eye, and issue one is taken care of.
We get into the water, souvenir photo taken, and we're set loose to explore the tank and its inhabitants. Right away I start struggling with this whole breathing under water thing. My brain keeps telling me "what are you doing!? you can't breath under water, I don't care what they tell you about that mouth piece" but the fishes are calling and I really want to find my boyfriend on the other side to take a picture. Its a slow start, I keep getting a mouth full (and occasionally a lung full) of salt water, and have to come up to cough it up - my boyfriend described the whole thing as "flailing". My girlfriend that I'm swimming with is a certified scuba diver, and she's doing just fine, and I feel like an idiot. After about fifteen minutes of flailing, choking, and hyperventilating underwater, my friend asks to check out my regulator. She tries it out, and TA DA takes on water. Turns out it was my equipment and not me! YAY! So we swim back and get a new regulator for me.
Before we make it back, the next adventure happens. While swimming, I feel something brush up against me. I ask my friend what it was - it should be noted that my friend has worked in this tank and knows it intimately. She starts to say nothing and then says "Oh my god, its Whitney". Now, I don't think I mentioned yet that there are stingrays and sharks among the creatures in this tank, and that I had to sign a waiver to get in, so "oh my god" is not what I want to hear. "What is Whitney?" I ask, instead of answering my question, my friend pulls me back and yells for me to move. As I swim backwards, a HUGE sea turtle comes to the surface right where I was. Since the turtles are endangered, my friend was trying to keep me from getting in trouble for accidentally touching Whitney. My boyfriend said it was quite humorous to watch me being "attacked" by the turtle.
Now with a working regulator, I roam all over the tank, looking at all the amazing hidden Mickey's that you would never see from any other perspective, and the beautiful animals. It was absolutely beautiful - I didn't want it to end. I love stingrays, they are my favorite aquatic creature. Disney has three varieties of stingrays, including a giant spotted eagle ray who just gave birth to pups. Gorgeous! The only creature I made sure to stay away from was the 300 pound groupers. I don't know why, but I HATE big ugly fish. I've gone helmet diving in the Bahamas, Snorkeling in Hawaii, and big, ugly fish just freak me out. Yet I love stingrays, go figure.
After the swim, my friend and I took the boyfriend to the Mexico pavilion for margaritas and nachos as a "thank you" for letting us abandon him for two hours while we swam. He then took us out to my favorite Disney restaurant - Artist Point at Disney Wilderness Lodge - the cobbler is to DIE FOR! I am going to try to recreate it at home. After dinner, we wandered to Downtown Disney. There's a new store by Disney Quest where you can build and customize your own R/C car - VERY COOL! Then we went to see a movie at the AMC theater. This movie theater has a bar inside! There's drink specials inspired by current movies - such as "the Hornitini". Considering how drunk some of the patrons were, how long were they waiting for a movie!! One flushed man, who looked a little like Sean Austen, kept trying to tell me how beautiful and intelligent I was and that he'd never tell me what to do....I just asked if he had a recommendation for a drink!
Overall, an amazing day!!
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