3 /5 Ingrid Royster: We bought a membership last weekend & visited on Saturday. Parking was easy on 3rd floor deck & you walk right into the lobby. Even with a membership the short line took a while. On a Saturday morning there were only 2 people & They’re helping people decide how many tickets what they wanna go see plan which extra stuff they want. And needs to be a person dedicated to memberships And more than two people on a Saturday morning overall.
Then, as soon as you have your tickets, you walk around the desk to go in, and there are people with cameras that you don’t know where they are there Who start barking instructions at you. Apparently they want to take a nice family photo, which was a very nice touch, But my hands are still full of receipts and tickets and trying to put things away. I didn’t want to do that at the desk because the line was so long. I didn’t want to hold up the next people.. They seemed a little put out that I would not drop what I was doing and take a picture right away. It did sour the whole experience because we start the visit with somebody barking at us and then unhappy with us.
Then we Decided to go outside because you can see the big tank right there. The exhibits were nice. They were very well taken care of. The people manning the animals were pleasant & Knowledgeable . And they happily interacted with people. I do like how they put the animals on Touch breaks so they weren’t overwhelmed. And they were very nice when they explained what was going on .
The only issue we had with the Experience inside was that it very difficult to navigate your way around. There are signs, but they point in general directions. I’m sure after we go three or four times we will learn our way around, but if you are a one time visitor to the area, this was not easy to navigate. Also, I have no idea if we actually saw everything. I’m sure there are maps, but we didn’t see any. I think there is one online. When it was time for us to leave, there is no clearly marked way out. It’s a very meandering and nothing says like this way to exit to the parking garage. It was a little frustrating. Two staff members were very nice and helped us find our way out and said yes they have to do this every day 15 times because no one can find their way out.
We bought a membership so obviously we will be going back. Again, the aquarium itself was very, very clean And the people with the animals were very nice.
