Sep

Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat

You know what happens when a morning person on East Coast time goes to Vegas? They’re up to watch the sunrise over the Strip.

Every. Single. Morning. 🙂

While Mike slept, I read a book. By the time he woke up and got moving, I was ready for a nap. Needless to say, I don’t think we left our hotel room until about 10:00AM. Mostly I think that the last 2 days of constant walking, long/late hours and desert heat was catching up with us. We decided to take it easy in our room until Siefried & Roy’s Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat opened at 10:00AM.

I took this picture out of sheer amusement. We were walking to the exhibit on the walkway that runs alongside the pool. There were approximately 6-8 guys sitting in a group with a big white board in from of them. Guess what they were doing?

If you guessed fantasy football draft, you’d be correct. Just kind of funny to see it going on….

Anyway, when you walk into the exhibit, the first thing you see is 2 large pools. Upon further notice, you realize that there are dolphins swimming around inside.

I took about 100 pictures of the dolphins swimming. It seriously was one of the coolest things we saw IN Vegas. It was very peaceful in the pool area and the dolphins were amazing to watch. I think the trainers probably have the best jobs in all of Vegas.

We believe one of the dolphins was separated from the others because it was a pregnant female (above). The 2 dolphins (below) in the other pool seemed a little agitated to be separated from her and kept swimming to the barrier between the pools to see her. 🙁

One thing that was kind of amusing was how the dolphins followed the trainers around. They literally followed them around the pool like little puppies. 🙂

We would have stayed much longer but the majority of the viewing area was in the full sun and at 10:00AM, it was approximately 432 degrees outside. 😉

Next up was the Secret Garden portion of the exhibit. This is where they keep some of the animals on display that are part of Siegfried & Roy’s personal collection. While it was very interesting to see, I would have been a little disappointed in the overall exhibit if we hadn’t seen the dolphins too. Most of the animals were dead asleep, hiding in the shade (smart little buggers) and hard to actually see. Even more disappointing was the fact that we never saw the little baby white tiger that they were advertising all over the hotel. Oh well.

The white lions (white, not albino) were by far the most interesting to see. I think they may have been the most interesting because they were right out in the open, you could see them on 3 sides and one actually MOVED while we were watching! 🙂