Dolphinaris Riviera Maya — Attraction in Quintana Roo

Overall, we had a pretty good experience there. This was my first dolphin encounter and I adore animals, so it was wonderful to interact with them. With kids in the group, they did their best to make it fun for everyone. The push ride was so much fun (they have the dolphins push you up out of the water by your feet with their noses), even though it was over so quickly. The dolphins are gentle and such a joy to watch how they communicate with humans.

I see all these negative reviews about how greedy they are because of how they charge for photos. I actually understand their business model. We got quotes from a couple of other places and chose this one because it was the cheapest by far for the experience. We paid $160 for a couple, where most places charged that or more per person. Honestly, I think we got lucky. We are not photo people. I'm much happier paying less for the activity itself instead of the all-inclusive side of paying more for things I don't want, like photos. Pick your poison basically, you'll get what you pay for only.

The only criticism I have is for the family that was in our group. None of them knew how to swim. Why would you do a dolphin swim when you can't swim you ask? Well, they had been other places before where the staff would assist them into the deep end so they could enjoy the same experience. This crew would not. They just gave them other activities instead, even though you could tell they really wanted to ride the dolphins. This is a case of everyone assuming when they shouldn't, but it's the business's job to eliminate the customer's assumptions.

Overall, great experience if you can swim and don't care for taking...

We went to this place in a group of 13 and enjoyed this unique experience. The dolphins were amazing. Touching, kissing, playing and riding with them was extraordinary. I cannot say enough about our visit. But, the only reason I gave 3 stars rather than 5 is due to the extreme price they ask you for the photos. First of all they won't let you to take anything with you (some of that completely understandable) including your phone or camera, so you must rely on their camera woman/man and at the end they will approach to sell those photos which is a usual practice almost everywhere (other than not allowing the cameras). But what hurts is that they are charging $49 USD per person that for us would sum up to $637 USD and that is insane. There was one person who spent about 30 minutes around the pool to take some pictures. She was using a regular camera (which I have a better one at home) and with all due respect she was not doing anything out of ordinary. All the photos are digital so there is no cost of film and developing, postage, etc. and I cannot understand why would they ask so much money?! Long story short and after so much back and forth and not too pleasant discussions with them, their last price dropped to $340 which was still unacceptable. We offered $150 (that is still too much but we wanted those photos) but they declined and we left without any photos. I cannot still understand why they do that. They had already spent the time and efforts to take those photos and all would be deleted while they could make $150 USD which is more than fair...

Visited today as a group of 6x adults. Paid £150 per couple for the trip, so £450 in total. They then said a locker to keep our belongings safe would be £12. We then had approx 20min wait for the Dolphin experience. The facilities are nice and clean, and there's an infinity pool to have a dip in overlooking the Dolphins, so initial impressions was good. We then had the Dolphin experience, that was brilliant, we each got our time interacting with the Dolphins, and we all really enjoyed the 45mins. We then had approx 50min until the return journey, so we had a shower and drink and chilled for 10mins, we then agreed to go and look at the photos. ...... this is where we believe they let themselves down massively!!! We was told the photo's would be approx £266 for the photo's for the 6x of us 😡, this is on top of the £462 we've already paid! This was their set rate for 6x people, we try to negotiate and they came down to £235 (rate for 4x people), but at £80 per couple for the same photos we kindly refused. We said we would be willing to pay £120 (£40 a couple) for the photos, we was then showed a price list where each photo was £40 each 🙈. Lets not forget this is for digital copies only, they haven't got to print any. The Dolphin experience itself is brilliant, but all the extra charges are a rip off. Unfortunately we never read the reviews before hand, if we did we would have chosen one of the others in the area! We spoke to a few others, who all said the same, Dolphins was great but photos a...