Great experience and company! We went on December 5th, 2020 on the 7:15 a.m. tour. We picked the early time to ensure our group had a better chance of seeing manatees, per River Ventures recommendation on their website. The guides Mike (captain) and Shelly said that by the afternoon the manatees are over people and ready to take a nap. Seemed legit 🤷♀️. We had one 16 year old in our group and he did some mild complaining about the early wake up time but he powered through. The rest of our group (8 total) were adults.
We were the only group on the boat, which was nice. I want to say they had spots for 10 people. I booked in the summer...which is when I initially was planning on going but found out that its the winter months that drive the manatee into the warmer springs from the Gulf of Mexico and decided to make a birthday weekend out of it with friends in December.
We arrived 15 minutes early to sign waivers and have some of our group pay. Another group was leaving as we were arriving. We watched a 10 minute overview video of how to interact with the manatees. The video stressed several times that parents are responsible for their children's behavior which makes me think they might have had problems in the past so if you don't think your children can handle it you may want to reconsider swimming with manatees since you have to be very quiet and still in the water. Two of us wore their wetsuits everyone else had their own. I am pretty "manatee" like in size and the staff didn't ask height/weight they sort of knew what size I would fit in and I thought that was handled nicely. I organized the trip and forgot to tell my group to bring towels (oops!). Don't forget your towel! You don't need fins. I wore some diving booties my husband had but most people didn't wear anything on their feet. We arrived wearing our swimsuits under our clothes. I wore yoga pants and a sweatshirt. I packed a beach bag with my towel and undergarments for afterward. I would recommend that you bring two bags. One with clothing items you can leave at the shop in a cubby for afterward and one you would take on the boat with towels. I had a gallon size bag to put my phone in which I'm glad I thought of. The bag is likely to get wet on the boat (at the least the bottom of mine did). We were bussed to the site (about 10 minutes away) and introduced to the Captain (Mike) and guide (Shelly). It is customary to tip them so factor that in and bring cash. You can either tip them on the boat or back in the office (they have tip envelopes). We tipped $10 pp. I am not sure that the industry standard is so I'm mentioning it just as a baseline. It was chilly on the boat even with all the flaps down. It took us about 15 minutes of slow motoring to get to the site (Keyhole Springs...I think).
Shelly went over the instructions again and gave us some fun manatee information while in the boat. The boat had anti fogging stuff for the snorkels so no need to pack any. Our guide got in the water first and then we followed (down a laddar...no jumping and scaring the manatee). We were all given a pool noodle and we had to swim a little way inside the spring area where the manatee were. There were three or four other tour boats there but it wasn't overly crowded that earlier. Several people in our group had GoPros but my husband and I didn't. The guide will take pictures while you are in the water and my advice if you want pictures is to stay by the guide. Several of our group went away from the guide and there are a lot more pictures of me vs. everyone else as a result. The pictures are available for purchase for a flat fee of $35 and they are shareable. So I paid for them and everyone pitched in. I got the pictures VERY fast and sent the link to everyone in the group. So definitely plan on purchasing them!
Even with my extra layers of body fat and a wetsuit I was cold! The guide, Shelly, wore an 8 mil wetsuit I think most of our folks were in a 5 mil wetsuit. If you are bringing your own wetsuit and you have a higher mil wetsuit I would bring that vs. the lower one. Don't wear gloves. If you are lucky you will get a chance to touch a manatee and having gloves on will ruin that. I had my booties on so I didn't feel the manatees swimming behind me but one of our folks had no booties and was able to feel them brush by her feet. There isn't a set amount of time you are in the water. The guide leaves it up to you. I didn't pay attention to the time so I wasn't sure how long we were out there for (I want to say we were in the water over an hour). By the time my husband and I headed back four of our party were already back and huddled around a small space heater. Here is a pro tip....take off your wetsuit when you get back on the boat...you warm up faster! I only took the top part down and put on a sweatshirt and that helped. I was so cold though that I had the Captain pour warm water down my suit and that also helped (apparently that is "a thing"). I didn't change into clothes on the boat because the deck was VERY wet and I didn't want to drag my yoga pants through that. We got back to the shop and used the changing rooms, tipped, and purchased the picture package.
The Captain recommended a breakfast place for us called The Biscuit Barn and we went there afterward (excellent breakfast).
It was a really really good trip and I highly recommend it.