Hosted: Discovery Cove Orlando — The Occupational Mom

Tag along as we spend a day at Discovery Cove in Orlando, Florida! This amazing park is a unique all-inclusive day resort where you and your family can swim with dolphins, snorkel among tropical fish and rays, hand-feed exotic birds and even encounter playful otters! Wanting to relax? There is an amazing lazy river and beautiful bay to swim in all while enjoying a lush, tropical atmosphere!

Did you know that Discovery Cove was Voted #1 Best Theme Park in Orlando by USA Today 10 Best? How amazing,right? After learning all of the details of the park, it’s honestly no surprise! At Discovery Cove, everything truly is all-inclusive, so bring your appetite and leave the snacks at home!

Your all-inclusive day includes a freshly prepared breakfast, gourmet lunch, plus endless snacks and beverages (including beer and wine for guests 21 and older). Additional all-inclusive amenities include lockers, animal-safe sunscreen, towels, wetsuits, snorkel gear and free parking. AMAZING! Shower facilities are also stocked with soap, shampoo, and conditioner, which are also complimentary.

KNOW BEFORE YOU GO: Reservations are required; daily attendance is limited to ensure every guest feels like a VIP. Also- if your children are UNDER the age of 6, they can not participate in any animal encounters.

Alright guys, As i’ve mentioned above, Discovery Cove is completely all-inclusive in regard to unlimited food and beverages, but it DOES have a few things you can additionally purchase to upgrade your day including the following: Premium drink packages, animal experiences, cabana rentals, daybed rentals, photo packages, trainer for a day and SeaVenture.

Upgraded packages are available that include admission to SeaWorld® Orlando and Aquatica, SeaWorld’s Waterpark® for 14 days surrounding the visit to Discovery Cove. Also, if you are a Florida resident, you can save year-round on admission!

Now that we know about the park itself, let’s dive right into our day there, shall we?

From the moment we entered the property it already had a cozy, smaller-scale vibe than any other theme park in Orlando and truly gave a warm, resort-style feel. We loved the ease of the check-in process in the reception area, which was simple and provided each member of my party with a lanyard that had our name and information on it. My lanyard also had a mini park map on it which was SO convenient to utilize throughout the day!

Immediately after entering Discovery Cove. This is where you check-in and receive your lanyards.

Immediately after receiving your lanyard and checking in within the reception area, you are free to enter the park which feels 100% like a tucked away, Caribbean resort. We each took a glass of fresh water with fruit before embarking on a beautiful winding walk through tropical foliage to get into the actual park itself. We arrived right at opening time so our plan was to head to breakfast and check it out! It’s all-inclusive, so why not?

Fresh water with fruit pit stop after checking in!

We immediately headed straight to Laguna Grill, which is the primary restaurant on property for breakfast and lunch. The restaurant offers up a wide variety of foods to please everyone in your party and is open specifically for breakfast at park opening until 10:30AM and then re-opens for lunch 11:00AM -3PM.

Discovery Cove also offers various snacks and even specialty pizzas that are available all day! We took advantage of this and definitely filled ourselves up! The Margherita pizza was my FAVORITE and my little one LOVED the fresh cookies! The all-day complimentary snacks were a pretty decent variety of items including various ICEE flavors, cookies, pretzels, various chips, soft-serve ice cream and various non-alcoholic beverages.

Alcoholic beverages are also included in your admission but you can upgrade to the premium drink package for $40 per person for the day as seen in the image below. We had the upgraded drink package and truly enjoyed the featured beverages. My favorite was the Passion Fruit delight! If you love trying fun beverages, I suggest making the upgrade.

As you can see by the park map below, Discovery Cove is truly a tucked away paradise in the heart of Orlando. The property is incredibly intimate and is filled with white sand beaches, topical foliage and Caribbean music playing everywhere. It’s easy to forget that you are in Orlando and not at a real all-inclusive resort on an island. The size of the property is also perfect, in my opinion. You can definitely see everything in one day and not feel rushed.

Walking anywhere in Discovery Cove is simply beautiful. There is white sand, beautiful foliage and amazing macaws just hanging out at various parts of the park!

Walking anywhere in the park is gorgeous!

These beauties are hanging out around the park!

So you all are well aware that Discovery Cove is an all-inclusive day resort for food and alcohol, but it also includes other amazing complimentary items to make your day even more amazing such as full utilization of wetsuits for all ages, animal friendly sunscreen, various outdoor showers and the most amazing bathrooms i’ve EVER seen at any theme park.

Wetsuits are included in your admission and free to use!

Tons of outdoor showers to rinse off as needed. These are located around the park.

Animal friendly sunscreen is also located around the park as needed and complimentary.

Seriously! The bathrooms at Discovery Cove truly deserve their own recognition! The moment you step into the bathroom it immediately makes you feel as though you are at a resort and not a theme park in Orlando. There are loads of complimentary towels and a large shower/locker area that also come with complimentary body wash, shampoo and conditioner! The bathrooms were AWESOME!

How beautiful are the bathrooms at Discovery Cove?

Each shower includes complimentary body wash, shampoo and conditioner!

When planning your day at Discovery Cove you have the option for various add-ons and upgrades such as renting a cabana for a day or renting a day bed. We opted for a day bed which was PERFECT for our little family of three. What was even better was the proximity of it to the bar, bathrooms and snack area! When we arrived to our daybed it also had towels prepared for us, which was a nice touch. We loved having a place to relax between swimming and exploring the park and also a great way to get out of the sun!

Our day bed rental next to Hibiscus Hideaway

We loved utilizing the day bed to relax, play some UNO and enjoy snacks throughout the day. Our little one also enjoyed playing in the sand while Mom and Dad relaxed and enjoyed a few complimentary snacks and beverages.

Did you know that there are also various complimentary animal encounters and/or educational opportunities scheduled throughout the day around the park? We loved this and found it to be a nice addition to our day. We were lucky enough to catch an encounter on this beautiful bird and we also caught one on the Marmosets!

If you don’t want to spend money on the various animal encounters offered at the park, or your kiddo is under the age of six (like our girl), you can still definitely enjoy a variety of animals! Check out adorable otters, incredible fish in the Grand Reef, macaws just relaxing on perches and the magical bird aviary!

Let’s talk about the bird aviary! This was hands-down our most FAVORITE portion of Discovery Cove. We probably visited this 3-4 times throughout our day on property. The moment you enter the aviary there is a cart set-up with an employee preparing small food cups for the birds. You can take as many cups as you want and simply walk around to feed them! Birds are EVERYWHERE and won’t hesitate to land on your hand, arm or head (entering in here definitely isn’t for you if you’re even slightly afraid of birds landing on you) and eat directly from the cup. My family absolutely LOVED this. As soon as a bird would empty the food cup we would go back and grab another. We had a blast!

The aviary is also split into three different rooms and even has the lazy river flowing through a portion of it! SO MAGICAL! If you’re hanging out in the aviary you can get right into the lazy river (wind-away river) or vice versa simply by going through a waterfall which essentially keeps the birds from going out. It was BEAUTIFUL and so incredible!

You can also enjoy identifying the various birds that live in the aviary with these cards! The back of the card is also loaded with various birds that live here. We enjoyed walking around trying to identify various birds as we fed them! Such a great learning opportunity for little ones as well.

Below is the entrance/exit to the aviary via the lazy river (wind-away river). As you can see, the waterfall is what prevents the birds from going in/out. It’s such a magical way to make this park truly feel like a paradise.

Discovery Cove also offers a variety of places to swim! We loved swimming in Serenity Bay, Wind-Away River and the Grand Reef!

The Grand Reef was also far more magical than I anticipated. Here you can swim or snorkel (masks and snorkels are also complimentary to use while in the park) with fish, sharks and sting rays! IT WAS INCREDIBLE! You can literally pet a stingray swimming past you. Where else can you get that up close? We spent a lot of time here and my girl had a blast simply looking under the water with her goggles on at all of the fish swimming past her!

I also love that Discovery Cove requires reservations and keeps the park to a relatively low number of occupants so no areas ever feel cramped or crowded. The Grand Reef was incredible to experience and truly felt like we were swimming/snorkeling in the Caribbean! We enjoyed the various sting rays swimming past us and loved learning about them from staff members located in the Grand Reef!

Without-a-doubt Discovery Cove truly is the most magical theme park in Orlando. It is incredibly easy to see why the park was voted #1 Best Theme Park in Orlando by USA Today 10 Best. If you want to experience an all-inclusive day resort that allows you to swim with fish and sting rays, hand-feed birds and truly feel like you are at a Caribbean resort, you NEED to visit Discovery Cove. We will 100% return, especially when our girl turns six so she can participate in more animal encounters. A BIG thank you to Discovery Cove for hosting my little family for the day. It was magical beyond measure!

Feel free to drop and questions in the comments or send me a message on Instagram! I would be more than happy to help you with planning your day to this magical theme park!