Zoomarine from Vilamoura: what the €28.90 entry ticket actually covers
Updated September 5, 2026 · 7 min read
The booking page shows €28.90, and underneath it 4.6 stars from 3,965 reviews. It is the most booked offer in the whole Vilamoura catalogue, and not a trip but an entry ticket. What the page does not tell you: that figure is the low-season rate, and the low season is almost exactly the stretch of the year when the water area is not running.
Guia, not Vilamoura
The park sits in Guia on the EN 125 at kilometre 65, in the municipality of Albufeira, around twenty minutes by car from the marina. The “Algarve:” in the title means neither a meeting point nor a pickup; what else that wording does across the catalogue is in booking mistakes. What you have paid for starts at the turnstile. At least the car park is free, according to the operator.
What €28.90 means in the park’s own price list
Zoomarine sells the same tickets itself. In the low season, which in 2026 runs from 12 March to 31 May and from 1 October to 28 November, a day ticket for adults costs from €28.90 online and €32 at the gate. Between 1 June and 30 September the park charges €34.90 online and €41 at the gate. Children from 1.00 m in height up to and including ten years, and guests aged 65 and over, pay €18.90 and €26.90 respectively; below 1.00 m entry is free.
So the €28.90 is no discount at all, but precisely the park’s own online rate. Against the gate, booking ahead saves a little over three euros, six in summer. The better reason to book in advance is the date anyway.
The cheap season is the one without water
Four attractions carry the same note on their park pages: open from 1 June to 30 September. They are the 400-metre lazy river Rio dos Côcos, the Quetzal slides and the children’s areas Ilha da Fantasia and Ilha do Tesouro – exactly what the booking description is selling when it mentions a sandy beach with slides. Their running period matches, to the day, the period for which the park charges more.
The 2026 season runs from 12 March to 28 November, after which the park stays shut until spring. In the shoulder months it does not open daily; in March and November, essentially weekends only. Opening is at 10am, closing between 5pm and 7.30pm depending on the date. Only the calendar on the park’s own site is binding, so check it for your date. If you want water in April, look to water sports along the coast instead; which weeks are the better ones is settled in the best time to visit.
Included, not included, rented
According to the park, the day ticket covers the presentations and shows, the 4D cinema, the aquarium and the zoological, mechanical and aquatic attractions. Explicitly not included are the Dolphin Emotions experiences, transport services, catering and merchandising.
The booking description lists sun loungers, photo booths and lockers in the same breath as the aquarium and the beach. At the park, loungers, cabanas and lockers sit under “Alugueres”, meaning rentals, and it publishes no prices – you ask at the Koala Bay shop. Carry them as a cost of the day, not as something included.
Bringing your own food is allowed, but not everywhere: picnics are forbidden in the catering areas, while picnic zones with tables and benches, not reservable, are scattered around the park. What four people cost in a park restaurant you know from town: eating out and taking breaks with kids.
The second day costs eleven euros
In every single category, the two-day ticket sits exactly eleven euros above the day ticket: €39.90 instead of €28.90 in the low season, €45.90 instead of €34.90 in summer, and for children and seniors €29.90 instead of €18.90, or €37.90 instead of €26.90. The second visit need not be the next day; it is valid up to ten days after the first. You set it up on your first visit at the “Extra Fun” kiosk, by fingerprint or wristband.
Eleven euros for a second day in the park is the cheapest add-on in the price list, and it pays off already if the weather turns on your first attempt. How the rest of a family week adds up is worked through in the cost breakdown.
Without a car the journey costs more than the ticket
Zoomarine runs no shuttle of its own. Its travel page lists the car, the Vamus regional bus, the railway station at Ferreiras some seven kilometres away, then taxi, Uber, Bolt and private transfers. If a third-party site promises you a “Zoomarine shuttle”, that does not match what the park says.
There is no direct bus. From the stop at Praia da Marina, line 9 takes you to the Terminal Rodoviário de Albufeira in 43 minutes, where you change to line 51, 57 or 14; those reach the “Zoomarine” stop on the EN 125 in just under a quarter of an hour, and from there the park puts it at roughly 300 metres to the entrance. With the change and the waiting, count one to two hours each way; the binding timetables now live only in the Vamus app. The “Giro” town buses are no help, as they stop only in Guia village.
A taxi or private transfer runs, according to the operators, between €35 and €50 per vehicle each way. For two people that makes the journey more expensive than both entry tickets together: Vilamoura without a car and the overview of things to do around Vilamoura.
What happens in the arena
The dolphin presentation is called “Sonho e Fantasia” and shows bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, in a pool in front of a grandstand, several times a day at fixed times. Alongside it run a presentation with seals and sea lions, two free-flight bird displays with raptors and macaws, and a music and light show. The Oceanus aquarium shows more than twenty ecosystems, from seahorses out of the Ria Formosa to sharks and rays. Since 2002 the site has housed Porto d’Abrigo, which the park calls Portugal’s first rehabilitation centre for marine species; for 2002 to 2025 it reports 725 interventions with marine animals there.
Whether trained marine mammals performing before an audience suit you is settled before you buy, not at the turnstile. The presentations here are not a bonus programme but the core of the place, and skipping them means paying full entry for the smaller half. Animals in the wild are a different matter: dolphin watching leaves from the marina, with no guarantee of a sighting.
€126.90 for around twenty minutes in the water
Dolphin Emotions is not part of the entry ticket. The shortest of the three programmes is called Encounter and costs from €126.90 online in the low season, or €147 on site, and €146.90 and €167 in the high season. It lasts about 60 minutes, roughly 20 of them in the water, and park entry is contained in that price. The minimum age is six, six- and seven-year-olds only when accompanied by someone over sixteen. Premium and Exclusive require eight years and that the participant can swim.
Anyone who already holds an entry ticket and only wants to watch buys a spectator ticket inside the park for €2; filming and photography are permitted only from the zone set aside for it, at a distance.
Who this day is wrong for
In the rain, Zoomarine is the wrong place. The park is almost entirely outdoors, and 4D cinema and aquarium will not carry a family through a whole day: Vilamoura with kids on a rainy day.
With a toddler, entry is free as long as the child measures under 1.00 m, except that the day is built around things that fail at precisely that threshold. The slides on Ilha do Tesouro require 0.90 m and 1.05 m, on the Rio dos Côcos children under 1.10 m need a life jacket and those under ten an adult in the same ring, and the new Nautilus ride is closed below 0.95 m and rideable only with an adult up to 1.20 m. What works with the smallest ones instead is in Vilamoura with a toddler.
Two groups pay too much online: for guests with a disability rating of 33 % or more the park quotes €22, and for pregnant women €27, both sold only at the ticket office and against proof. Anyone in those groups who books ahead spends €28.90 on the same ticket. The park calls itself accessible to people with reduced mobility, while qualifying in the same paragraph that individual attractions may not be usable. What applies in your case is worth having confirmed beforehand rather than explained at the entrance: Vilamoura with reduced mobility.