ORLANDO, Fla. — I was out in deep water, over-my-head deep, my left hand grasping Yoshi's dorsal fin and my right hand on her right flipper. Her skin was an iridescent gray, smooth and rubbery like an inner tube, but not cold to the touch. Not cold at all.

The dolphin trainer asked, "Are you ready?" And I nodded.

Then, on signal, Yoshi and I were off in a splash, taking an Orlando thrill ride of a different sort.

Being a bit on the young side, Yoshi wasn't as long as the older dolphins, so I took care to keep my feet clear of her tail as we sped toward another trainer and the shallow end of the man-made lagoon — the ride of a lifetime finished in less than a minute.

The one-on-one dolphin swim is the crowning experience at Discovery Cove, the high-dollar-and-worth-every-penny sister property to SeaWorld Orlando. Together, the two establishments satisfy that human impulse many of us have to reach out to other creatures, particularly to sea mammals, without all that ocean in the way.

It's not right to call these places theme parks, even though their focus is on marine creatures. Calling them amusement parks doesn't fit either, despite their having a couple of hair-raising roller coasters and a lazy river. There are polar bears, penguins and alligators, but this is hardly your typical zoo. Aquariums, maybe? I've been to some of the best aquariums the world has to offer, and these are the first to show me dancing whales or encourage me to wade into a saltwater lagoon and kiss a dolphin.

Let's call them sea life parks, then, two special places where education, conservation and entertainment come together in wondrous ways.

As for the shows, it's hard to upstage a 10,000-pound whale. Make that impossible when a pod of them leaps in unison and drenches the first five rows in saltwater. To see killer whales at all is show enough. But to watch the photogenic black-and-white creatures interact with trainers and exhibit natural behaviors on cue transcends entertainment and enters the realm of ooooh.

SeaWorld Orlando could do worse than coast on the popularity of its "Shamu Adventure" and "Shamu Rocks America" shows. But those acts are moving aside — and the 5,000-seat Shamu Stadium is in the final days of renovation — for a new spectacle called "Believe," opening May 11. The cast of 24 killer whales and their trainers have worked for almost two years on the choreography for "Believe," which promises a three-story set, original music, surround-sound speakers and four movable panoramic LED video screens that will project images from cameras placed above the show pool as well as below the water line.

Equally a marvel is the engineering that makes it all possible. Shamu Stadium's several pools hold 7 million gallons of saltwater filtered at a rate of 28,750 gallons per minute. The 36-foot-deep Shamu show pool alone contains 2.5 million gallons.

Little wonder, then, that the park covers 200 acres, which doesn't hit home until you need to navigate it on deadline. Show schedules leave you just enough time to hoof it — no lingering in the gift shops or dawdling at the snack bars — between theaters.

At the opposite end of the park from Shamu, the 2,600-seat Whale and Dolphin Theatre offers "Blue Horizons." Part Broadway, part Vegas Strip, "Blue Horizons" is the kind of show Cirque du Soleil might attempt if it could put dolphins and false whales under contract. Acrobats dressed as birds bungee jump 40 feet above the 900,000-gallon tank, or somersault into it against a set (designed by Broadway's Stanley "Beauty and the Beast" Meyer) decorated with enormous bubbles. Blue and gold macaws and an Andean condor fly through the open-air theater as acrobats shoot up from the water, balanced on the noses of false whales, and all of this to the beat of an original score recorded by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

I promise you haven't seen anything like it before.

On a smaller scale, the endearing "Pets Ahoy!" takes the stage in the air-conditioned confines of the 850-seat Seaport Theatre. Cats and dogs, most of them rescued from animal shelters, are the headliners here in routines that hide their human trainers behind the scenes for most of the show. In one sequence, a black cat chases a white cat across the stage into a small door in the village-like set. Seconds later, a procession of black-and-white kittens emerges from that doorway.

Dogs go through a comedy routine, birds fly into the audience to retrieve dollar bills, and a pig "drives" a sports car. There are animal acts at Universal Studios Florida ("Animal Planet Live!") and at Disney's Animal Kingdom ("Flights of Wonder"), but SeaWorld's "Pets Ahoy!" is the one that's most worth your time.

Some of SeaWorld's other shows: "Clyde and Seamore Take Pirate Island," the adventures of two sea lions, at the 2,600-seat Sea Lion and Otter Stadium; "Odyssea," a water-themed circus, at the 2,400-seat Nautilus Theater; and "Mistify," a multimedia show with fountains and fireworks, staged on summer nights at the park's lake.

There's a real temptation to concentrate on the shows at the expense of other SeaWorld experiences, but giving in to that impulse would be a mistake. This place is home to more than 17,000 animals.