Dolphinarium

Address: in the Sea Garden, toward Zlatni Pyasutsi (Golden Sands), Varna
Tel: 052/ 826 089, 302 199
Open: Tues-Sun
Performances are:
January to May: 11.00, 15.00
June to August: 11.00, 14.00, 16.00
September to December: 11.00, 15.00

As the skies turn grey and winter continues along, we find ourselves looking for activities to entertain our kids. Ok, so that’s the excuse; the kids don’t seem to need entertainment. The real reason is my husband and I are in danger of going into hibernation if we don’t get out of the house.

This week we dragged the children off to the Dolphinarium (Делфинариум  in Bulgarian), which lies at the edge of Varna’s Sea Garden. Being an avid dolphin lover I have visited SeaWorld USA on numerous occasions and included swimming with dolphins in two of my kiddie-free vacations. I didn’t expect the Varna show to compare with the showmanship of the US and I was more concerned that conditions might be somewhat inhumane.

The Dolphinarium is a large modern building and on entering, you must run the gauntlet of over-priced dolphin souvenirs to reach the cash desk. This is not a trip for those with heart conditions; the entrance fee for two adults and two children (70 leva) left me feeling faint and my wallet was in desperate need of resuscitation. It’s easy to forget that most of the people who visit the Dolphinarium are foreign tourists with sack loads of holiday spending money.

After recovering from the entrance fee, you make your way into a large semi-circular auditorium, which surrounds a small pool. We chose ringside seats in the splash zone; the only other spectators were a group of nuns, who sat sensibly in the middle of the auditorium, and two other families. My sons had already seen the dolphin show with a children’s holiday club a couple of years back, and they had regaled every detail of the act. The climax of the show was the selection of a volunteer from the audience to ride in a dinghy propelled by dolphin power. After establishing that they only chose children, not adults, to ride in the boat, I encouraged them to volunteer: “This is your one big chance,” I explained as we waited for the performance to start. “There are only two other kids to compete with for the place in the dinghy, so which one of you is going to volunteer?” I was horrified when my enthusiasm met with negative responses of “Not me” and “No way am I doing it!”. My sons explained that the volunteer had to put on a huge pair of orange knickers, and that while it would be “cool” to be able to pet the dolphins, there was no way on earth they were prepared to undergo the humiliation of the huge orange knickers.

And so, on with the show, which started a little late (in true Bulgarian style) and lasted for about 30 minutes. The dolphins were good. They performed all manner of jumps, spins and tail waving tricks in a tank the size of my neighbour’s swimming pool. The trainers, a small moustachioed man and a young Bulgarian waif, gave commentaries in Bulgarian and English and included plenty of Yankee-style speeches about the dolphins’ personality traits. Probably the most astounding news was that several dolphins had been born here and this is a true sign that they were happy and well looked after in their environment; my SeaWorld trips also confirmed this.

After some impressive ball tricks, the trainer asked if there was a person in the audience who would like to help with the next trick. No amount of nudging and pleading was going to change my sons’ minds and they sat with their hands tucked firmly under their bottoms. I watched, jealously, as some other kid was selected. The trainer joked that he was going to have to get in the water and handed him a pair of huge orange pants, but they didn’t ask him to put them on. The boy was pushed out into the centre of the pool by two dolphins and loving every minute of it, as he was able to pat and play ball with them.

Once the performance ended, we made our way out of the auditorium to the amplified cackles and squeals of the marine mammals cooped up in their tank.

Did I enjoy the show? Yes, very much and it was a great way to fill time on a grim day, and children love it, so it keeps them happy too. Was it inhumane? As long as you can accept the notion of keeping living creatures cooped up in tanks, then no, I guess it’s not. Would I go again? No, not to the show. I found it prohibitively expensive for our Bulgarian pockets: after the show, I went to the ground-floor cafe, where you can watch the dolphins swimming around in their tank, which happily is much larger than the show pool. And the best news; you don’t have to visit the dolphin show to visit the cafe.