There are so many fun things to do in EPCOT just as a regular park visitor, but there are also some additional tours you can pay for to upgrade your EPCOT experience, and most are WELL worth it.
The Seas with Nemo and Friends
For example, you can go BEHIND THE SCENES of Living with the Land with the Behind The Seeds Tour, which will give you a chance to see the EPCOT greenhouses where a lot of Disney World food is grown. One of the most popular tours, though, is DiveQuest, which gives you a chance to go diving in the aquarium in The Seas Pavilion. However, right now, a lot of folks booking that tour are getting notifications that it’s been canceled. BUT it’s 100% for a good reason. Trust us.
DiveQuest is a scuba diving experience that you can book in EPCOT, where you can dive into the aquarium in The Seas Pavilion and get up close and personal with some of the sea life that call the aquarium home. We received a message from a DFB reader who let us know that their booking for DiveQuest in a few weeks was canceled and that the reason they were given was that diving was no longer being allowed due to “the safety and well-being of the animals.”
Aquarium
We asked a Cast Member to clarify and were told that the experience had been temporarily canceled because Hali, a hammerhead shark who lives in the aquarium, has started to swim laterally. Now, this shark always swam with a little bit of a tilt, but Disney is concerned about her, and rightfully so. Disney is canceling DiveQuest for a little while to see if the divers are the reason she started doing this or if it has something to do with the aquarium’s netting.
Hali, the hammerhead shark
Right now, Disney has only canceled tours for the next few weeks, but we learned that Hali is now behaving normally and swimming with her slight tilt from before, and not fully sideways now that divers are no longer in the tank. For the record, Hali’s full name is Haliaka, which is Hawaiian for “remembrance of God.”
We’ll be checking up on Hali in the future, as well as see about Disney’s plans for DiveQuest, so stay tuned to DFB for more.
Learn more about DiveQuest here
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My husband has been wanting to do Dive Quest for years. I hope Hali is ok.
When my husband did dive quest last year, there was a CM who would come out and occasionally update the family and friends of the divers while we waited. He’d also answer any questions we might have had. I observed her for a bit while we waited and asked him about her tilt )which was more than a little) . He told me it was a good thing because it meant she was relaxed. From what I can gather from Google, other hammerheads have been observed swimming at between 50 and 75/80° angles when swimming and that leveling off is more hunting behavior so I’m confused as to why less of a tilt is a good thing. It feels more concerning if she’s actually leveling out with divers in the tank because that’s could be a safety issue for the divers as it may be a signal that she’s beginning to consider attempting to hunt?