Welcome to Coral World!

One of the activities I wanted to do with my family was to check out Coral World, over on the East End in Smith Bay.

 

Scott and I haven’t been there yet, so while my family was in visiting I went with them to check it out. Coral World is considered one of the top tourist destinations and there are many taxis waiting to bring you there, so you will find a way there no problem!

I took a good amount of photos during our day there, so I’ll let them do most of the talking. For prices and hours you can check out Coral World’s website.

Here is the entrance, this details the many activities you can do while you’re visiting. Obviously Coral World is a great day for kids, many many things for them to see, touch, etc.

When you walk in you find yourself on a patio, keep walking through and you’ll come up to the Shark Encounter:

 

As we paid and entered the woman told us ‘If you hurry you can watch the shark feeding’. I got excited, as I’m equally fascinated and petrified by these predators. However the Shark Encounter was not the scary thrill I imagined, it’s a shallow pool with baby sharks swimming around, mostly nurse and lemon sharks - 

We stood and watched them swim during the  presentation and feeding, it was interesting enough.

 

Don’t let me sway you from it though; Scott and I are devoted Shark Week viewers on Discovery Channel, so I’ve seen the big man-eaters so many times that unless you’re shoving a dead pig down a Great White’s throat directly in front of me I’m hardly going to get goose bumps.

With that said the looks on the kids faces while they watched the swimming sharks were definitely excited looks, and when the presenter pulled out a baby shark in a tub with water and allowed kids to line up and touch it you could tell they were thrilled, ‘Dad! I touched a SHARK!’. That’s definitely a cool day for your off-spring, and a great photo-op for you. This little girl seemed a little skittish, but was smiling afterwards:

Across the pathway from the shark pool are more shallow pools where kids can pick up and feel things like starfish, horseshoe crabs, etc. Kids were piled over there, so that is definitely enjoyable. I’ll touch a starfish no problem, but I’m too girly to pick up a crab so I let the hyper seven-year old next to me take care of that, which he did many times - ’Mom! Check it out!! Take a picture!!’.

What was I excited for? These little guys…

 

 …and you should know that Scott and I own three parrots, so I’m pretty much like a seven-year old myself when I’m around birds. Especially colorful squawky ones that aren’t afraid to jump over and check you out. Here is the woman stationed inside (who was never without a couple of birds perched on her head or shoulders):

 

She sells little cups of nectar, and the birds, who are well-schooled in ‘visitors will feed us!’ quickly fly or bounce over to a nectar-purchaser and stick out their little black tongue to start feeding, like this eager group (look how much the little guy in the front is streeetching his body to get the nectar!):

 

No one in there seemed skittish, and it’s definitely a cool activity.

After we left the bird area we walked around the corner to see the big turtles lounging in their private pool – does he look like he’s winking at me?

 

From the turtles we made our way down the path to this big white bubble.

 

There are a couple of activities here, one wet and one dry. We chose the dry one and once we entered we made our way down three levels to the underwater viewing area and walked around looking out the many windows in the circular room.

 

Here’s some of the underworld we were checking out…

 

From here you can watch the other activity, the wet one, and it’s pretty cool to see. It’s most likely much cooler to actually do! Once you are attached to your breathing helmet you take a walk around a long chained path underwater, and it looks like a pretty amazing activity – they were under water for quite awhile. I’m not sure if this guy could actually see me taking his picture…

 …and a couple of minutes later I caught this group taking pictures of each other with their underwater camera (a MUST if you do this).

 

After spending a good long while watching and checking out the sea life (here’s a cute fishy):

 

we walked back up the stairs and I snapped this pic of the breathing tubes connected to the underwater walkers (try saying that three times fast…)

 

As we left the bubble we walked around to the back of the park and saw that they had started the sea lion presentation, unfortunately when you enter the building it was so packed that it was impossible to see anything. If you do want to see the sea lions make sure you get there early so your kids can sit on the floor up front. My family and myself have seen sea lions do their thing in the past, so we weren’t too miffed by missing it, and we walked back outside.

Right outside the door is the sting ray pool…

 

and we sat on the edge for a little bit and watched them float along the bottom, then cover themselves up with sand, then uncover and start moving again. Sting rays are neat to watch, and I’d never actually seen one cover itself up with sand, so it was cool to see how they do it. Mom and I were also cracking up watching this guy:

 

This is a conch (hidden under his big shell), and he makes this trail in the sand when he moves. And by ‘moves’ I mean every couple of minutes he inches up a few inches and stops…..only to inch up again in another couple of minutes. It’s funny to watch, and he seems pretty ignorant of the big rays swimming around him and knocking into him with their big bodies.

From the rays we walked down a path to look at the tropical gardens. It was a welcome walk to get out of the sun and into the shade of the lush plants and palm trees. As we came to the end of the trail we all decided we were hungry and walked back across the main pathway to find some food at a quick eats place…right next to the shark pool - welcome to the Shark Bar:

They have burgers and dogs, good salads, good deli sandwiches…sodas/juices/frozen drinks/beer/etc. We ordered our food and brought it over to our table and muched away while watching people around us. As we ate I watched people in the shark pool, for a certain amount you can strap on snorkel gear and enter the pool two at a time with a supervisor and swim with the sharks. I assume the sharks are pretty used to this as I saw no nervous kids and heard no frenzied splashing of fins which tells me the baby sharks continued their lazy circling of the pool while the visitors walked and snorkeled right next to them. But, like I said above, kids will be thrilled with this ‘Dad! I’m swimming with sharks!!‘, and you’ll have cool photos to take home and show your friends.

After we finished eating we left the park via this gift shop (the only way out, very smart of them…),

 

and wandered into the cluster of taxis. I mean parking lot. I pulled out my keys and waved them to try and deter the taxi drivers from asking, nay, begging us to ‘ride us back to the ship’ (it didn’t work), and once we found our vehicle we slowly made our way out of the parking lot and back home.

Was it a fun day? Definitely, it’s always cool to look at different animals. Have you seen the same thing in aquariums around the world? Definitely, but for kids this day will be a treat, and they’ll leave sun-tired and no doubt hugging a stuffed turtle that they’ll beg you to buy for them…(and you’ll probably leave with a cute something for yourself as well)!

More on Coral World:

Hours & Prices

Undersea Observatory

Sea Trek

Site Map

Contact Us

Semi Submarine

Deep Reef Tank