Theater of the Sea (Islamorada)

We had chartered a snorkeling excursion with KeyZ Charters for our Wednesday morning in the Florida Keys, but unfortunately the weather was too windy for snorkeling that day. I was not surprised when Captain Samantha called to tell me the charter would need to be canceled. Although we had been looking forward to snorkeling in the Islamorada area (Alligator Reef and Alligator Lighthouse and Cheeca Rocks), it was obvious that snorkeling would not be very satisfying on that morning. I appreciated Captain Samantha recognizing that and proactively refunding the charter. Even though we did not get to participate in this excursion, I'd recommend KeyZ Charters to anyone interested in snorkeling in the Islamorada area.

Knowing that the weather was not ideal for snorkeling during most of the week we were in the Florida Keys, we had thought out some "Plan B" options to consider. For this day, we decided to visit the Theater of the Sea in Islamorada (the town in which we had rented a house for the week).

As soon as the cancelation of the Islamorada snorkeling charter was confirmed, we purchased tickets for Theater of the Sea online. The General Admission ticket, at the time of our visit, included access to five shows/ride that were offered in the same rotation that one could join at anytime. Seeing all five requires approximately 2 1/2 hours. The five shows/ride were the Fish and Reptile Tour, the Parrot Show, the Dolphin Show, the Sea Lion Show, and the Bottomless Boat Ride. I'll cover each of these briefly in the order in which we participated in them.

We did not arrive at the park when it opened, but the rotating schedule of shows allowed us to easily join the next show to start after our arrival.

The first show we saw was the Dolphin Show.

The dolphins were the stars, but the trainers were entertaining too.

The next show we watched was the Sea Lion Show.

Sea lions are always entertaining and these and their trainer did not disappoint.

The Bottomless Boat Ride is shorter than the shows, but provides a different perspective. The passengers all sit on narrow outside portions of the boat and the center of the boat does not have a bottom. This allows marine mammals to swim and jump in the middle of the boat (though the dolphins did most of their showing off jumping behind, in front of, and alongside the boat).

The Fish and Reptile Tour allowed us to see and hear about select turtles, sharks, rays, and crocodilians living at Theater of the Sea.

The Parrot Show showed off the intelligence and training of several highly entertaining birds.

These birds were beautiful and smart!

After participating in all five shows/rides, we had some time before our scheduled additional Animal Interaction that we had scheduled.

We spent some of that time walking through and looking at the lush vegetation.

We also looked at some of the exhibits such as the fish, turtle, and parrots.

We had purchased an additional Animal Interaction for which we were supposed to meet at the park's Lagoon Beach. We therefore snorkeled at this Lagoon Beach for our remaining time until our Animal Interaction start time.

Lagoon Beach offers a small sandy beach that allows for people to sit or walk in the water as though at a regular beach.

Fish food is available for sale and that food makes it easy to get the fish to come close to the people feeding them.

The beach activity was far greater than the snorkeling activity while we were there, which meant that the visibility in the water for snorkeling was reduced.

Our Animal Interaction session was the final one of the day and Lagoon Beach (which closes earlier than the rest of the park) closed while we were involved in that session. When we exited the session and walked by Lagoon Beach, the water visibility was fantastic because the beach-goers had left.

We had purchased the additional "Swim with the Rays" animal interaction, which was described this way, "Graceful, gentle and fascinating to watch… Experience the thrill of swimming with southern stingrays! Feed, touch, and swim with these docile, beautiful creatures. You will be able to interact with the stingrays in shallow water on a sandy beach. While snorkeling you will be able to observe many types of tropical fish – without going to the reef!"

Other Animal Interactions available at that time included "Swim with the Sharks", "Dolphin Interactions", "Sea Lion Interactions", "Meet the Sea Turtle", "Meet the Alligator", and "Meet the Parrots".

We were given a short introduction to how to feed the rays, which was made more entertaining by a bird trying to sneak some of the food we were going to feed the rays.

We sat in the water and allowed the rays (one of which was huge and heavy!) to come to us holding the food below the surface of the water so that the rays could glide over our hands and eat the food in our hands. As we moved further into the water, the rays could swim onto our laps.

After we had fed the rays, we were able to swim and snorkel alongside them. We also got to swim in and snorkel with the next-door nurse sharks. It was a unique and memorable experience for all of us and well worth the additional fees.

Theater of the Sea photography staff were present for the portion of the animal interaction in which we fed the rays and we purchased the photographs they took of our interactions with the rays. This was nice to have this availability of photographs because we were too busy feeding the rays and swimming and snorkeling with rays and then with sharks to remember to use the GoPro.

It was another great day in the Florida Keys despite our best-laid plans being foiled by the breezy weather.