Be prepared to get ripped off
By A Yahoo! Contributor, 3/9/09
We dropped a lot of money with AquaWorld on our recent trip to Cancun and felt pretty sick about it in the end. My husband spent ~$100 for an alleged 2 hour scuba training + one dive (he had never done scuba). The training was in our hotel pool and ended up lasting about 30 minutes. They showed him a picture of some "cool" looking place they would take him for the dive, but in the end took him somewhere else that was not as nice as the photos.
At the same time that my husband booked the scuba, we arranged for me and our young daughter to swim with the dolphins. This cost $105/person. Our plan was for my husband to film/take pictures while we were in the water. We paid $30 extra for him to be able to join us. As it turned out the dolphin event was at Wet 'N Wild. So, the price of Wet 'N Wild admission was included in our ticket, but we were not informed this and so did not arrive at the place until right before the dolphin event, which means that we did not really have time to go around Wet 'N Wild. They told us lunch was included with this ticket--yeah, Wet 'N Wild food, which was a lot like the food you get at a basketball game (think fake cheese nachos, etc.). The bigger letdown was that they would not allow my husband to bring the camera(s) into the dolphin event. Why?? Because they had their own staff filming and taking photos and they wanted to be able to capitalize on that. Obviously, this was irritating because the man who sold us the tickets heard us discussing how my husband would take pictures, etc. and he failed to inform us that this would not be allowed. So, we were going to break down and pay the $29 for a photo (slightly larger than a 5X7), but all of the photos they took were horrible--my daughter was always looking down or away, you couldn't really see her face. Our other alternative was to buy the video the staff filmed for $69 (or maybe 59). We were just so outraged at the entire thing that we did not buy anything. The bottom line is that there are several other places that do "swim with the dolphins" (as we learned later) that allow cameras, etc. For example, there is an interactive aquarium at "La Isla" shopping mall and I think the price there is about $50/person. They allow video and cameras into the aquarium.
Stay away from AquaWorld!