The Florida Aquarium

During spring break back in April, I took the kids to The Florida Aquarium in Tampa. My pre-schooler had been obsessed with sharks, so I thought it would be cool to take him to see the sharks. After seeing the aquarium prices, I was disappointed that would be our only big outing during spring break. It ate up our budget! Still, I wanted to go because I thought that if the ticket prices were so high, this was going to be an awesome aquarium.

When we first got to the aquarium we saw lots of ducks and turtles...much like my backyard. This was not to exciting. My 7 year old loves turtles, but they are not that exciting to watch. Then we saw some river otters. They were very cute. We stayed to watch the otter show, but we were extremely disappointed that the aquarium worker just talked about otters while she fed them. There wasn't seating, or even very much room to stand. So we were struggling to even see what she was trying to point out about the otters. What a major bummer.

We looked at some fish, more ducks, more turtles, and FINALLY my youngest saw sharks:

On the second floor there was a window in the floor that looked down into the hammer head shark tank. Really cool, and really cute to see my son face plant onto the window because he saw sharks.

 After looking at some fish, we made our way down to the saltwater area. It was really cool to look at all the different sea creatures. Nothing big, but some odd, ugly, beautiful, and strange looking creatures. It wasn't anything we hadn't seen at other aquariums, but I enjoyed looking at them again. We got to touch starfish in the touch tank, and that was a new experience for us. But then we saw BIG SHARKS! My youngest was so happy and in awe of the scuba divers swimming around with them. I've never seen him sit still and listen for so long. He loved learning more about sharks.

He's banging on the glass, trying to make the shark mad...ha

But then, that was it! We were so upset that there was nothing more to see. It took us 2 hours to do the whole aquarium. It took all day to do the Chattanooga Aquarium, I guess I was expecting more out of an aquarium in Florida.

Outside there is a courtyard area with playgrounds, water, and water play. I thought this was probably the coolest thing about the aquarium. Unfortunately I did not know about how wet the kids could actually get, and I did not bring bathing suits. So, they only got to play for a short time in water playground area.

We got excited that there was going to be an penguin show in the lobby. I love penguins, and thought that it would be fun to watch even if penguins aren't really known for doing cool tricks like a seal or something. Well, we waited, made sure we had a good spot, and waited some more. Finally, a man came out with a wagon and two small penguins. Don't get me wrong, the penguins were adorable, but they just stood in the wagon with their heads in the corner.

In this case, you do not get what you pay for. I am very upset that we spent so much money on The Florida Aquarium. I wish we had gone to the Clearwater aquarium to see the dolphin, Winter.