Better hope your kids remain firmly tucked into their Finding Dory-themed beds all night long lest they get a little too enthusiastic about leaning over the edge of this wall-free AirBNB floating over Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The vacation rental company is offering one lucky family of four two free nights aboard their 2-bedroom, 1-bath open platform, with a beautiful white-curtained master suite on one end and the kids’ room tucked behind it.
The platform itself is pretty cool, taking advantage of the beautiful weather and pleasant temperatures of the area, not to mention the world-class snorkeling and scuba diving. If you want to win, you’ll have to submit an essay on why your family deserves to stay at the temporary rental, and your answer better “surprise and delight” the folks at AirBNB. The winner will be selected on July 4th.
“Imagine living atop a coral garden beside a sand cay in a billowing reef home on the Great Barrier Reef,” says AirBNB on the promo page for the contest. “You feel the pull of the unknown when you peek over the edge of the coral shelf and take in your neighborhood – home to 600 types of soft and hard corals, 100 species of jellyfish, 3,000 varieties of molluscs, 500 species of worms, 1,625 types of fish, 133 varieties of sharks and rays, and more than 30 species of whales and dolphins. And somewhere, beneath you, is the most famous Blue Tang in the world.” [The latter refers to the type of fish featured in ‘Finding Dory.]
Unsurprisingly, the contest is a collaboration between AirBNB and Disney Pixar’s Finding Dory, the animated film that’s likely set to wipe out the species of fish it highlights just as it did with clownfish back in 2003. In the years since ‘Finding Nemo’ came out, more than 10 million clownfish were removed from reefs for home aquariums, causing them to go locally extinct in places like Thailand. At least viewing tropical fish in their natural habitat at the Great Barrier Reef leaves them where they belong. Just don’t go throwing any trash overboard, please, kids.
