*My family received this experience at no charge. These are my opinions.

 

Have you ever had a mermaid wish? Have you ever wanted to be flippin’ your fin? I have, I have my whole life. When I was a little girl and watched The Little Mermaid, I wanted to be Ariel. I wanted to live under the sea. I wanted the purple shell bra, my hair to float in the water gracefully and that gorgeous, teal mermaid tail with long fins.

 

Well friends, this dream can come true in Maui. I have proof.

Flipping your fin

We just returned from a magical vacation in Maui and my family just had the most memorable experience – we were mermaids! Hawaii Mermaid Adventures can help your mermaid and merman dreams come true. Both my son & daughter participated in this experience with me and we absolutely LOVED it.

We had mermaid swim lessons in Maui!

We had mermaid swim lessons in Maui!

You may recall me telling you how important swimming is to me and Clint. We have had our kids in a swimming program over at SwimLabs with their swim teacher/coach Josh, who our Little’s just adore. Well, part of the incentive to keep moving forward with swimming and getting past some fears (that mainly our daughter has) was to earn a mermaid tail once she hits certain goals.

We decided that our Maui trip would be the perfect “test” for her to earn her tail on our snorkel trip with our favorite snorkel crew, Maui Snorkel Charters, because she would have to sort of face her fears of deep water. Now mind you, I’m a mama first, and we knew we would gear both littles up for safety with life-jackets even though we know their skills are up-to-par from SwimLabs BUT we want them to be at ease and have fun! Sooo leading up to all of this, we did little snorkel preps at different beaches.

One of the days after some beach time, we went to a nearby restaurant. While waiting for a table to open up, I suddenly had a thought, I wonder if there is a mermaid experience here in Maui? I googled Maui Mermaids. Hawaii Mermaid Adventures popped up and I clicked on their site. I knew this would be perfect for us! I contacted them to see if they had availability. They did, it would be the morning before our snorkel charter but that would be just fine! This was going to be quite the surprise!

The morning of our mermaid surprise, the littles had no idea what was going on. They just knew that we had to get ready for the beach a little earlier than usual. Although, they were waking up early every stinking day anywhere from 6 – 6:30am; poor Bama and Papa. I slept with an eye mask and a waterfall noisemaker on; no thank you to waking up early every day on vacation!

We drove to Makena Landing, a quaint little cove where turtles are known to hang out and swim around. We were happily greeted by our mermaid, Lila, who sat on beach blankets waiting for us. When the kids realized what was happening, they were ecstatic! Lila began our adventure by telling us about how we are mermaids if we keep our ocean safe by collecting trash when we see it and using reef-safe sunscreen. I had no idea that chemicals in everyday sunscreen could harm our reefs like that. It was nice to hear how much Lila loved Mother Ocean. She then told us old fables about sailors and mermaids and their relationships. It was fun to hear the history of the mermaid.

IMG_9408

After that we selected our tails. Coral chose a perfectly pink tail. Gunnar chose a shiny blue fin. (I couldn’t help myself but start singing “Shiny” by Jemaine Clement from Disney’s Moana when Gunnar said, “I’ll take the shiny blue one please.”) They chose a scaly green tail for me. I loved it. I was in heaven! Lila had a beautiful black tail. We all practiced getting in our tails there on her blanket.

IMG_0739

She then explained how we would go down to the shore and take a couple fun family pictures and then get in the water. We would have her safety sled (like a giant boogie board with handles) to hold onto when getting our mermaid tails on in the water.

Pictures on the beach? Okay, that was fun! And, that made it really, real for all of us really fast! There’s no other way to say it. Because up on the blanket, we never pulled up our skins fully; here, we did!

WE WERE MERMAIDS!

Our littles were my little mermaids!

Every night when I say, “sweet dreams my little mermaid”, it was true!

swirls_top

This was a moment; a magical moment.

It was time to get in the water. I was able to adapt to it quite naturally but the kids found it to be a little harder. Swimming with a fin is quite different than with two legs. It made me think of Ariel’s experience getting legs in The Little Mermaid, but the other way around. Awkward, but still very precious. Hakuna Matata. We will adjust! We put Coral with a floaty, no worries! And Lila did a hand-skill challenge with Gunnar so he could figure out the correct way to maneuver his fin.

 


We swam through hula hoops, made silly faces, swam near sea turtles (in fact I didn’t even know how close I was to one because I couldn’t see under water! It wasn’t until I saw the footage afterwards!)

It’s funny though about the silly faces, you never really know how funny some of the faces you make are when you come out of the water until a camera is on ALL the time! So for your enjoyment. Here ya go!

Here’s me looking like a turtle! Honu Lynette, and I’m definitely singing this sarcastically from Disney’s Moana, “You’re Welcome!” – Maui (Dwayne Johnson).

Honu (turtle) Lynette, you're welcome ;)

Honu (turtle) Lynette, you’re welcome 😉

 

.

 

Mahalo, Memaid Lila!

Silly faces with Lila

 

If you want your mermaid dream to come true while you’re visiting Maui, give Lila and her flippered friends a call. Tell them we sent you! 🎈