SeaVenture, Discovery Cove
Orlando, Florida

If you’re too timid to scuba dive yet eager to have a dive-like experience, book a SeaVenture at the Discovery Cove aquatic park. After a brief training session, you’ll don a specialty diver’s hat — you can leave your glasses on — and walk underwater through a manmade reef within a 1-million-gallon saltwater habitat. Pink whiprays and giant shovelnose rays will be your companions, along with clownfish that reside in a grotto. Guides will write the names of what you’re seeing on a special screen. Through an underwater window, you’ll get glimpses of bonnethead, whitetip, and other sharks. You’ll also be invited to hold a starfish, cowrie, or urchin.

Big Island Divers
Kona, Big Island, Hawaii

Graceful mantas are the largest rays in the world, and you can snorkel with them after dark. You’ll head out on a raft before sunset. As the sky darkens, the raft will illuminate, you’ll get into the water, and guides will scatter food so mantas emerge. Certified scuba divers can swim below the rays instead. If you’re a seasoned tank diver, opt instead for the Tank Blackwater Dive where you might see night squid, hunting dolphins, and oddly shaped siphonophores.

Bear Lake, Utah

The Caribbean comes to mind for the ultimate scuba trip but think Made in the U.S.A. instead. Bear Lake, spanning 160 square miles of Utah and Idaho, offers inland diving. Suit up — the water is cold, even in summer — and start at Cisco Beach. You’ll spy trout, sculpin, and carp amid the below-surface rock formations. You’ll be on your own, as no outfitters are available, and the water can be murky. Yet pros enjoy the challenge of the striking turquoise water and the glory of what they spot beneath the surface.

Maya Snorkel Experience, Audubon Aquarium
New Orleans, Louisiana

Instead of watching exotic fish and cownose rays swim around Audubon Aquarium’s 132,000-gallon Maya Tunnel exhibit, jump in and join them. Twice a week, up to four of you can don snorkel masks and fins then enter the tank. You’ll spend 40 minutes floating around water-based creatures from 30 species, all typical along the Great Maya Barrier Reef — while customers in a viewing tunnel watch you. Wave back! Replicas of elaborate Maya city ruins including carvings bring a bit of Latin American culture to the aquarium, located near New Orleans’ French Quarter.

Aquatica San Antonio
San Antonio, Texas

It’s fun to spot stingrays in an aquarium, sure, but not nearly the blast it is when you pass the graceful gliders after zooming down a thrill ride to a below-ground grotto. Hop onto the four-seated Stingray Falls raft at the Aquatica San Antonio waterpark. Enter the water slide, take the twists and turns through open and enclosed tubes, and you’ll land near large windows revealing close-up views of stingrays plus plenty of tropical fish, all swimming freely. Sign up for the Stingray Encounter to swim with the stingrays in the grotto.

Submarine Ride
Waikiki, Oahu, Hawaii

See the sunken ships, barracuda turtles, and bits of fallen World War II-era airplanes beyond the shores of Waikiki — neither wet suit nor air tank required. Instead, get your thrill of watching butterflyfish, yellow tangs, and black tip sharks living around Diamond Head volcanic ring within the comfort of a 64-seat submarine designed for tourists. Peer out the portholes as the vessel travels 100 feet below the waves for 45 minutes. A narrator will help you spot whatever is swimming by, including Moorish idols and eagle rays.