DixieDolphin
Contributor
So, got to do DiveQuest last week through work. Pretty novel little experience. Tested out my new dive comp (an Oceanic Geo) for the first time, too. Here's a little review, complete with photo & video:
Met up with the DiveQuest folks outside of Guest Relations and headed back to the backstage area of the Living Seas (I flatly refuse to call it 'The Seas with Nemo' bleeeh...!). Got a quick tour of the back area, complete with compulsory advertisement video viewing and waivers to sign.
Then sent us back into the locker rooms to change. They did pretty good estimating wetsuit sizes and the like. I had no trouble with mine (except that it was a shorty for that 77F water, which ain't typically enough for a skinny cold-magnet like me
). Shoved our stuff in lockers, which were locked and the keys locked in a lock box.
Now, they paraded us through the attraction to the observation deck where they escorted us through an access door, through the chilly A/C output vent area, and up to the topside area of the tank.
The tank looks /enormous/ from above.
Here's where it gets all cushy... they lined us up on the steps and had us walk in the water onto a ledge where they had already set up everybody's gear. Heck, they even helped put it on ya. :11: Seriously, I've never NOT put my own gear together. It was weird.
So, they send us all in down to the bottom, a maximum depth of about 23ft. We have to do their little structured bit, where we swim over and wait in line to be filmed waving in their little underwater air-filled bubble thing. The little bubble thing made the /weirdest/ noises under there. An odd echoing, gurgling sound with a metallic twang. I'd love to have recorded that sound, it'd give anything Pink Floyd could try and trip ya out with a run for its money.
Then they let us all pair off and swim around. It was... well... like swimming in a big fish tank. Personally, I was less interested in waving to all the kids on the other side of the glass.. which got old after about the first two minutes.. and far more in following the sharks around. They have two male sand tiger sharks, about 8-10 ft in length. A couple of female sandbar / brown sharks (looked around 5ft or so), and a small female blacknose. There were also several cownose rays and a few sea turtles (one looked like a hawksbill, but I'm not as good on my turtle identification skills as my fish skills). At one point, the boss startled one of the sand tigers and it took off with a snap-whap that felt like a deep resonating gunshot heard from a considerable distance. Very interesting sound! I entertained myself by following them around at a respectable distance, fascinated that I was close enough to practically count their ampullae of Lorenzini.
The rest of the fish were primarily Caribbean, with plenty of porkfish and grunts. Many of them were obviously suffering some aquaria-related skin infections, but that seems to be the norm in most facilities I've visited.
The visibility, naturally, was basically clear. You could easily see from one end of the tank to the other (203 ft, by what they told us). Personally, I got a kick out of watching the bottlenose dolphins in the next tank over... separated by a metal-bar grate and a bubble wall. We were to stay at least 10 ft away from it, but you could still see them swimming around if you watched through the bubbles.
After about 40 minutes (well, 41 according to my new dive comp) we were done and they dragged us out to change. They... handed us TOWELS as we exited the water. Towels! TOWELS! Dang, I felt spoiled.
Ungeared right there and their staff disassembled everything. Led us off to change out of wetsuits and back into dry clothes. Picked up stuff from lockers, then went on to watch the video they had taken of us (a ten minute affair.. with the first three minutes as an advertisement for the program, followed by about 30 seconds of each one of us, and then a bit of stock footage at the end.) They sold them for $35 each. We bought one copy (which we later encoded to mpeg to share amongst ourselves). They gave us free T-shirts (whoohoo!) and a free Disney conservation fund button (eh, okay), then set us loose into the park.
All in all, not a bad dive. Personally, I'd rather dive in the ocean. I don't know that I would, speaking for myself, pay the $150 to get in. It's a cool dive, but really a novelty in my opinion.
BUT.. nevertheless... here's the video of the experience, edited down to just have my 30 seconds of glory and a little stock footage:
YouTube - EPCOT DiveQuest - May 29, 2008
And here's a screengrab from it:
=)
Met up with the DiveQuest folks outside of Guest Relations and headed back to the backstage area of the Living Seas (I flatly refuse to call it 'The Seas with Nemo' bleeeh...!). Got a quick tour of the back area, complete with compulsory advertisement video viewing and waivers to sign.
Then sent us back into the locker rooms to change. They did pretty good estimating wetsuit sizes and the like. I had no trouble with mine (except that it was a shorty for that 77F water, which ain't typically enough for a skinny cold-magnet like me
). Shoved our stuff in lockers, which were locked and the keys locked in a lock box.Now, they paraded us through the attraction to the observation deck where they escorted us through an access door, through the chilly A/C output vent area, and up to the topside area of the tank.
The tank looks /enormous/ from above.
Here's where it gets all cushy... they lined us up on the steps and had us walk in the water onto a ledge where they had already set up everybody's gear. Heck, they even helped put it on ya. :11: Seriously, I've never NOT put my own gear together. It was weird.
So, they send us all in down to the bottom, a maximum depth of about 23ft. We have to do their little structured bit, where we swim over and wait in line to be filmed waving in their little underwater air-filled bubble thing. The little bubble thing made the /weirdest/ noises under there. An odd echoing, gurgling sound with a metallic twang. I'd love to have recorded that sound, it'd give anything Pink Floyd could try and trip ya out with a run for its money.
Then they let us all pair off and swim around. It was... well... like swimming in a big fish tank. Personally, I was less interested in waving to all the kids on the other side of the glass.. which got old after about the first two minutes.. and far more in following the sharks around. They have two male sand tiger sharks, about 8-10 ft in length. A couple of female sandbar / brown sharks (looked around 5ft or so), and a small female blacknose. There were also several cownose rays and a few sea turtles (one looked like a hawksbill, but I'm not as good on my turtle identification skills as my fish skills). At one point, the boss startled one of the sand tigers and it took off with a snap-whap that felt like a deep resonating gunshot heard from a considerable distance. Very interesting sound! I entertained myself by following them around at a respectable distance, fascinated that I was close enough to practically count their ampullae of Lorenzini.
The rest of the fish were primarily Caribbean, with plenty of porkfish and grunts. Many of them were obviously suffering some aquaria-related skin infections, but that seems to be the norm in most facilities I've visited.
The visibility, naturally, was basically clear. You could easily see from one end of the tank to the other (203 ft, by what they told us). Personally, I got a kick out of watching the bottlenose dolphins in the next tank over... separated by a metal-bar grate and a bubble wall. We were to stay at least 10 ft away from it, but you could still see them swimming around if you watched through the bubbles.
After about 40 minutes (well, 41 according to my new dive comp) we were done and they dragged us out to change. They... handed us TOWELS as we exited the water. Towels! TOWELS! Dang, I felt spoiled.
Ungeared right there and their staff disassembled everything. Led us off to change out of wetsuits and back into dry clothes. Picked up stuff from lockers, then went on to watch the video they had taken of us (a ten minute affair.. with the first three minutes as an advertisement for the program, followed by about 30 seconds of each one of us, and then a bit of stock footage at the end.) They sold them for $35 each. We bought one copy (which we later encoded to mpeg to share amongst ourselves). They gave us free T-shirts (whoohoo!) and a free Disney conservation fund button (eh, okay), then set us loose into the park.
All in all, not a bad dive. Personally, I'd rather dive in the ocean. I don't know that I would, speaking for myself, pay the $150 to get in. It's a cool dive, but really a novelty in my opinion.
BUT.. nevertheless... here's the video of the experience, edited down to just have my 30 seconds of glory and a little stock footage:
YouTube - EPCOT DiveQuest - May 29, 2008
And here's a screengrab from it:
=)
