Dolphin Quest Hawaii — Attraction in Hawaii

EDIT: I am changing my review from one star to three stars. Although I was very frustrated at the time for what I think was good reason, I wanted to adjust the review based on the fact that the staff really did try to make this as right as they could after I left the review. They offered another visit free for my son, but of course, we had already left the island. They then sent over the professional pictures that usually cost money to purchase. They did manage to get one where my son wasn't crying, and I absolutely treasure that photo. So I still believe they need to do better on communication and I also think they need to train their folks to be a bit more gentle with really little ones, but I do think they did their best to make this right after the fact.

Original review: My wife enjoyed her experience for the adults - I’ll let her leave a review for that side. My review is for the wee tots experience.

We took my almost 3 year old to interact with the dolphins. They say to arrive 10 minutes early - THIS IS INACCURATE. The program starts ten minutes early. You need to be there at least 30 minutes early to get checked in and fitted for life vests. You also need to allow for a little more than 30 minutes of walking from the parking lot (it’s in a resort and does not have its own parking). So if you have littles, I would recommend showing up to the parking lot an hour before at minimum (I would do an hour and a half early if I did it again… which is very unlikely)

We arrived at 8:10 for an 8:30 appointment. My son was rushed and confused and nearly to tears before we ever got to the water. He didn’t calm down until we were almost done and didn’t really get to enjoy his experience at all. The 15 minutes, of which 10 are spent with the Dolphin, cost me more than a day’s wage. For people staying at this resort, it’s probably pocket change, but for us, to spend this much money, it would have been nice to have more information ahead of time.

My son was asking to see the dolphins all week and when we finally got to do it, he was rushed and scared of the staff (staff were polite, but strict and rushed) to where he didn’t really get to enjoy his ten minutes with the animal.

If you want to do this with a little - come SUPER early and don’t...

The guest experience at Dolphin Quest is mostly about ways to take your money. They are all about the money and it’s an icky, uncomfortable feeling. Big turn off.

They are more focused on taking your picture than letting you interact and “swim” with the dolphins. Every second of your 30 minutes is a photo op for yourself or someone in your group. You have to sit and watch while everyone in your group takes a photo. It wastes valuable time in the water, especially when you only get 15 or 30 minutes.

We paid an obscene amount of money to do this activity and I would say it definitely isn’t worth it. We had hoped to swim (or go in the deep end) with the dolphin as outlined in the experience we purchased, but we never left knee or waist high water. This was extremely disappointing. We felt like we didn’t get what we paid for at all.

The front desk staff was rude upon arrival and made us feel bad for being late even though we were there 15 minutes before our reservation. We even sat around for 20 minutes before anyone even came to get us.

We ended up purchasing the $150 photo package and the download link and code provided didn’t work. It took more than a week after our visit and multiple emails to get our photos a secondary way.

My three year old was excited for the experience but became very uncomfortable upon arrival and didn’t last more than 3 minutes in the water. They knew we were there for his birthday and the first thing they said when we got out of the water was we can’t give you your money back for him. It was such a turn off. We paid nearly $300 for his portion and we didn’t get any reimbursement or any accommodation or extra time for the other two people in our group who went after us. We definitely waisted $700 on the excursion. We didn’t get our full time in the water, didn’t get to “swim” with the dolphins, were made to feel like we did something wrong and were just an ATM for them, customer service was poor on-site. I wouldn’t go back or...

This was the most expensive thing we did in Hawaii but it ended up being well worth it. Getting there was a bit confusing; you have to park in the Hilton parking lot and then walk through the Hilton main entrance and through to the other side of the resort. It is about 20 minutes of walking, so be prepared for that.

We got to Dolphin Quest early and had a lot of time to kill. The Dolphin Quest staff was very attentive and one of the staff stood and answered all the questions my son had about the dolphins and whales he had seen on our trip so far. Because we got there so early another staff member offered to take us into their fish cove to meet the goat fish. This was very cool, the goat fish would come up and tickle your legs with their tongues...we all got a huge kick out of it.

They had lockers for all your stuff. There were also showers to wash off with afterwards and changing rooms in the bathrooms. All of this is in a private area (only the people who are doing dolphin encounters go back there).

After that we got ready for our Dolphin encounter. We suited up in a life vest and a snorkeling mask. There were 7 people in our group (3 were our family). The encounter started with us sitting on a platform and getting to meet the female dolphin we were swimming with. Then we got to go out in groups and do some hand signals and swim with the dolphin.

What was really neat was that this female dolphin had just had a baby and we got to swim with him as well. He was hilarious and kept photo-bombing the pictures they were taking by jumping up behind them.

The whole experience was really unique and neat. The pictures we ended up getting from it were amazing and well done. The staff we worked with there was friendly, knowledgeable, and entertaining. This was incredibly expensive but it was also a very unique experience that we will remember forever; I...