After finishing Orlando Mermaid School’s first debut event with the City of Orlando invited by Denise, the Aquatic Director overseeing public pool facilities in Orlando, Florida, we can o-fish-ally say that our doors our open to a unique mermaid swim experience here in Orlando, Florida that can compete with major theme park adventures as a stand alone entertainment option.
The school is owned and operated by Cheryl Pastrana who goes by the alias, “The Orlando Mermaid.”
Red Cross Swim Lessons, PADI Mermaid Training, and Mermaid Photography + Underwater Videography are three of its main services, with options for a mermaid birthday party performer as a sub-option to the many different ways you can curate a mermaid experience here in Central, Florida. Applied Mermaid – Orlando’s Premier Mermaid Swim School continues to branch out into an ever evolving brand and is happy to have established its headquarters here in Orlando, as a woman with neurodiversity owned & operated small business, offering neurodiverse friendly options as well.
“The way I was able to get this lovely opportunity to connect further with the city I was born and raised in was by offering yet, another special niche, that I felt was important enough to discuss with The City of Orlando in order to help secure a pool facility in which to train not just mermaids, but kids with Autism how to swim. By combining my Masters in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) & Speech Therapy background, with Aquatics as a Red Cross Swim & PADI Mermaid Instructor, I have created a fun, effective way to learn how to swim and apply something as unique as mermaiding to it.
After hearing the stories of my patient’s families recounting their neurodiverse child’s close encounters with drowning due to a lack of expressive and/or receptive skills that I work on with them to be able to behave & communicate in a responsive manner to dangerous situations, & these families experiences with their child’s removal from group swim classes, and even private ones due to behavioral concerns, or an instructor not having enough experience in working with kids who have Autism, I decided this is how I can turn what I studied into a full blown passion. With my love for the water, nature, and a population I’d never thought I would work with that are neurodiverse, just like me, but in a different way I am able to do what I enjoy and it shows in my work. Most importantly, it’s outside and these kids are able to breath fresh air, soak up their vitamin D and are engaged in what they are learning to do.
Having been able to work for free with the City of Orlando as a professional mermaid offering my mermaid swim program made me realize this community needs this and grant funding is the next step, along with working with major insurance companies such as CMS by advocating for them to write out vouchers to licensed, private swim instructors with their own general & professional liability that work extensively with special needs individuals independently without over relying on major conglomerate swim programs which don’t have the relevant experience for this. These programs save lives too, but they overshadow more specialized individuals in the field from compensation in a relatively not for profit type of industry of teaching individuals how to swim.
One of the families I invited from my clinic whose child has Autism came and enjoyed there time at the reopening of the Northwest pool. When the kids and adolescents began to get too rowdy in the pool everyone was asked to get out, as Denise knows a thing or to about crowd control and keeping individuals safe in her community.
The child, being in so many hours of therapy already, only wanted to get back into the pool while the parents had their hands full packing up. The child’s speed and lack of receptive understanding, that if they go too deep they will drown, caused me to have to snatch him out of the water due to his high rates of elopement several times within the blink of an eye; a common behavior in kids with Autism.
It takes a village to keep these kids safe but it also takes financing. Most of these families will not have the extra money to pull out for private swim lessons and it does take a highly specialized individual to teach them safely.
My company’s mascot is a mermaid. A real mermaid saves lives & helps people to find their own voice, and that’s what I plan to do here at Applied Mermaid. – Orlando’s Premier Mermaid Swim School.”
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