DIVEQUEST!!
Alright, so for those of you that don’t know, DiveQuest is held in The Seas with Nemo and Friends GIANT tank and is a scuba dive, but in the aquarium where everyone can see you flail around, even though in your head you think you are Ariel.
My BF and I were just certified and this was our first dive outside of our certification, so if you are a beginner this is a PERFECT experience for you! Cost was $120 a person for us, I think, and we did get an AP discount.
Oh, and no cameras were allowed backstage, so all you will see are the pictures of us underwater that my parents took.
Needless to say, we gave DiveQuest two thumbs up!
We did the earliest tour at 4pm. Note: we only had 5 people in our group, the later one...had over 10! I think they cap it out at 12.
You meet the tour at Guest Relations OUTSIDE the main gate of Epcot, and they do start promptly. After checking us in, our two guides ushered us behind the scenes where we walked into the backstage area behind Nemo and Friends actually.
I dont want to spoil everything for people, but you get about a 45 minute tour and orientation seeing the research facility, how they feed and prep food for the marine life, keep the filtration system operational and how much research they actually do. It was extremely interesting!
Some fun facts:
- The Seas and The Georgia Aquarium go back and forth on biggest water volume and therefore aquarium in the US
- The main aquarium is SO big that you can fit Spaceship Earth in it, and have room to drive a Disney Bus around it
After the tour you have time to suit up, or what I like to call “sausage case yourself,” into a shorty wet suit. You CANNOT take any of your own gear besides your mask...as in, not even a hair tie. They give you a biodegradable hair tie, for real, that cant hurt the fishies. And you cannot bring an underwater camera, again, my parents took these pictures of us flopping around. They do have a videographer the whole time and make a great short, edited video of your time down there (45 minutes) and it’s ONLY $15 (98% sure). Definitely not over $20.
Here’s another pic to break up my text! It should give you a sense of how big the tank is...
After being suited up, they walk you out on parade...to my dismay, across the Nemo main floor, down the aquarium viewing area (where it fans out to like 360 degree view of the aquarium) and you walk up another hidden spiral staircase to the top of the tank. It’s such a cool view from up there, and I wish I could show you! But I cant.
They are super efficient with your gear, and it’s already set up and ready to go for you. They just strap you in and you float out onto the middle of the area with your group and head underwater! The DiveMaster takes you on about a 15 minutes tour of the whole aquarium so you can get your bearings and then for the rest of the half hour you are on your own!
Standing on the Nemo Ride Hallway!
Let me say, people at Epcot are MORE excited to see you in the tank, than the animals. For a half hour, I was THE SHOW, and I LOVED IT! I got the entire Coral Reef restaurant to do the Gator Chomp (aaaahhhh...thank you very much), doing flips and hamming it up. After the allure of my nefound celebrity wore off we got to the good stuff, like this cool DUDE!
So, a note on the sharks. Yes, they are down there, yes they are huge. No, they will not hurt you. All of their teeth have been taken out and replaced with fake foam teeth! JUST KIDDING!
They could hurt you if they wanted to, but they see the likes of us 3 x a day 5 x a week, and know what and when they eat. Therefore, you’re good. Did I want to ride their dorsal find and get close to them like my boyfriend did...heck NO! But, I was cool. Minus the few close encounters to them, that made my stomach flop.
Melissa the Showboater
After your dive under the sea, you go back to change, shower and towel off. There are hot showers, shampoo, conditioner, hair dryers, etc. Oh, and lockers for all of your stuff. They show you the video they made, which I again think is great and we’ve shown it to everyone, and you are free to go!
Side Note: I don't know if they are supposed to escort you back out of the park, but they just let us go. Meaning, if you didnt get a pass that day, you could just have gone and enjoyed Epcot. We have tickets, so it was whatever for us, but if you didnt pay admission...that is pretty sweet.
One more underwater shot!
Up next, an anti-climatic end of the day at MK, but with my FAVORITE picture of the weekend!
