Clearwater Marine Aquarium (Florida Trip 2018 Part 2)

If you have never seen the movie Dolphin Tale, our kids would tell you to stop right now and go watch it! :) (And then they would say to go watch Dolphin Tale 2!) These are movies based on a true story (our favs!) and since learning that, the kids have been talking about the day we could visit Clearwater Marine Aquarium and see Winter the dolphin for ourselves. Lorelei currently aspires to work there someday.









The kids have patiently waited and anticipated this trip and it was such a big day for them. We arrived at CMA a little too early (somehow I missed they opened at 10 rather than 9?!) but thankfully they had a penny machine in the parking garage to help kill some time while waiting.

Getting in early. :)

We booked an animal experience for the kids (because if this is your dream trip...I think this is just a must!) and they absolutely loved it. They were able to work with Nicholas, the less-famous-but-still-awesome dolphin. CMA's policy is rescue, rehab, release, but the three dolphins still at CMA are unable to be released. In Nicholas' case it is because he was found as a baby with his mother. His mother passed away but he survived, but could not survive if released because he was never taught how to live out in the ocean by his mother. He also suffered sunburns while he was beached and still has the scars from those. We found out from the ladies who worked with the kiddos that he actually starred in both movies, but played a dolphin other than himself. (It was so fun watching Dolphin Tale 2 on the flight home and seeing Nicholas as well as his trainer in the movie now that we knew that!)

Their experience was amazing. They were able to not only pet and feed Nicholas, but give him signals as well, that ended with a splashing war. Just awesome. We cannot say enough good things about the CMA staff. They were incredible at their jobs with the animals, and they also were just so good working with our kiddos.

(A couple of green screen shots below...)

After the animal experience we spent the day checking out CMA as well as attending just about every "talk" that they had on the schedule. We learned a lot and loved the day.

Getting an up-close face-to-face with Winter and Hope was pretty special.
The little boy in the picture had some toys making noise that they were interested in so they came to check it out.
(His mom used to volunteer there so she knew just what to do!)

Checking out Winter and Hope.

The tail talk not only let us learn about Winter's prosthetic tale,
but also told us the differences between the movie and the real story.

Quite a few sea turtles live at CMA because they get hit by boats.
This makes them have air pockets in their shell and they are unable to swim like normal.

You can see how its hard for them to get very deep
 when their bum wants to stay up in the air from the air pocket!

Underwater view.

It is a working recovery aquarium so you get to watch some of Winter's therapy in action.

Girl can't get enough.

We love CMA!!!

We had supper out on the deck at Island Way Grill,
which was a restaurant from Dolphin Tale 2!
(Check out Ms. L with her Winter stuffed animal who had to join us for supper of course!
Although they were a little fancy for our taste, L said she would enjoy eating there since it was in the movie.
They even had a word search with names from the movie for their kids menu. :) )