Disney World VIP Experience Indefinitely Canceled Over ‘Animal Welfare’ Concerns

Disney World offers several VIP tour experiences if you’re willing to pay for them. The most popular is the VIP tour, which involves a specialized guide taking you through the parks and allowing you to skip the lines.

However, those tours can cost $450-$700 an hour for a minimum of seven hours. While paying massive amounts of money just to enter Disney World, those tours are out of reach for most people.

So, for those on a Disney World budget, there are less expensive tours, like the Behind the Seeds tour at the Land Pavilion, which takes guests into the greenhouse for a tour and shows them how Disney grows the plants.

A little way down the path in EPCOT is the Seas Pavilion, featuring the Seas with Nemo and Friends. At the Seas Pavilion, guests can enjoy the DiveQuest experience, which allows SCUBA-certified guests to swim in the large saltwater tank with Disney’s fish.

However, according to reports, DiveQuest has been suspended indefinitely after an issue with one of the animals in the tank. The experience only returned to EPCOT on May 1 after a prolonged closure for refurbishment, and now it is closed again for the foreseeable future.

According to reports, the DiveQuest experience was closed due to an issue with Hali, a hammerhead shark, who started swimming laterally. Cast members are currently testing to see if the divers’ return is responsible for the changes in Hali’s swimming pattern or if it is the result of new netting that was put up to keep Hali away from other fish.

The DiveQuest experiences have been canceled for the “next few weeks,” with no return date announced. Impacted guests are being told that the experience was canceled for the “welfare of the animals,” and they are receiving refunds for the experience.

With the safety of the animals at stake, it is hard to argue with Disney for making this decision. Hopefully, when cast members get to the bottom of this issue, DiveQuest will return to the Seas Pavilion.

What’s your secret VIP experience at Disney World? Let us know in the comments.