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The Florida Aquarium
Rating Details »
- Hours:
Mon-Sun. 9:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
17 reviews for The Florida Aquarium
This place is great for kids and with the bar outside overlooking the water park type area you can't go wrong for a nice day out with the family.
They have some really cool exhibits, just skip the star fish exhibit though because the water is freaking FREEEEZING cold, I nearly lost a finger to hypothermia....no really...well not really but still!!!
Also, dont try to pet the sting rays during feeding or you will get scolded by a disgruntled employee. (Really chill out your babysitting nurse sharks and stings rays, get over yourself)
The Florida Aquarium is a great place to take people when they come to visit, but I would recommend locals visit if you've never been.
The ticket price is pretty steep, but people paid ungodly amounts of cash to see a bunch of dead bodies encased in resin, so why not drop the cynicism and pony up a few bucks to see Florida ecology presented in a way that engages both kids and adults?
A great aspect of the Aquarium is how it's organized by each ecosystem--replicated with applicable plants, sand, creatures--even going to the lengths to show you what wildlife would be lurking around the depths under the Sunshine Skyway bridge.
My favorite display, by far, is the seahorse exhibit...the museum leverages their skill in lighting and art direction to make every seahorse look like it's own performance piece.
The cons: $$, screaming kids here and there (although one will make you burst out laughing, like the kid who yelled to his mom, "That octopus likes you and is gonna cover you with INK!"), and the lingering worry that the wildlife doesn't care for being locked in lucite boxes.
Otherwise, block out some quality time to check out a Tampa institution, letting yourself take it in, room by room; it's the best aquarium I've seen on the east coast.
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VERY kid friendly aquarium. Lots of touch opportunities - sting rays, sharks, starfish, anemones, etc. We also got to see a penguin up close. There is a great outdoor kid's play area that is a splash park during the warmer months. We were here in January and the water was not on but it was still fun for the kids to play in. Also recommended for kids is the "Ocean Commotion" gallery. Our boys thought that was great.
There are coupons in the Tampa-area magazines (we picked up a tourist's guide at the airport) for $3 off per ticket.
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Yes, it's very kid friendly here, which sucks (pardon my french) for those of us that don't have any and find screaming short people quite annoying. The seahorse exhibit is my fav but I can't help but wonder how limited their life is now that they're kept in a 2x2 plexi glass case. It's dark and cool in the aquarium, I think it' s over priced for the exhibits but it's neat to visit. Just try to avoid the little ones running around in packs screaming and then tell me how you did!
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My friend Brian and I have a tradition of visiting at least one aquarium in every state we visit. I guess you could call us aquarium aficionados or aquarium snobs, or according to Angelo F., "aquarium-o-phile" :P And when we met up in Florida, Tampa was no exception! So we decided to visit the heavily advertised and promoted Florida Aquarium.
We somehow found $1 parking in a nice garage just a minute away (we thought it was $10 until we went to pay), paid our $17 a person to get in (like tools! Because we totally had $3 off per person coupons in all those touristy guides that we got), posed for a picture on a green screen that later included a sea life background (totally cheese-tacular), and then we were off to explore the Florida Aquarium!
We saw cute birdies, including an owl, tortoises, froggies, fishies, seahorsies and sea anemones. I had a field day taking pictures!
Fishy: http://www.flickr.com/...
Froggy: http://www.flickr.com/...
Baby seahorsie (my fave at only 1/4 of an inch long!): http://www.flickr.com/...
And my favorite part has got to be watching the toddlers and children get all excited over the animals. This place is super kid-friendly. It was adorable.
We walked, stared, oooh-ed and ahhhh-ed, and then all of a sudden, 45 minutes later, we're back to where we started. Huh? That's it? That's gotta be the least amount of time that I've ever spent at an aquarium. And I spent a good amount of time spazzing out over each tank from the cuteness (not to mention taking pictures)!
So the thing that boggles my mind the most is... Um, why are the aquariums that we went to in Colorado and UTAH infinitely better than The Florida Aquarium? Florida's right on the gorgeous coast while the former are boxed in. I expected more of Florida!
That's alright, though. I had a great time with Brian and we got to see many cute things :)
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It's been a while since I've been here, but I can remember my last visit well and it was a good one. The aquarium is pretty big, it's a common attraction for tourists in Tampa since there aren't too many animal locations around town.
The location is good with Channelside close by and the setup of the place is nice, with plenty of variety, in my mind my only other favorite aquarium is Monterey's aquarium in California. Overall, it is a little pricy, but certainly a good choice to spend a day with kids or your digital camera.
We love meeting friends and the water park with eating area is a great place for play dates
This is an okay aquarium. Some of the exhibits are ho-hum and not very imaginative, I felt like I had seen them a hundred times before. They had fairly good information on the animals and that made things better.
They had a nice touch pool and they offer both behind the scenes tours and a boat tour of the bay near the aquarium that was nice. We saw dolphins on the boat tour along with horseshoe crabs and some other fun things
On the day we went they were advertising a sushi night...which I was jointly amused by and annoyed by. Most aquariums these days try to educate people on how many food fishes are being overfished or are polluted by mercury...and this one is using sushi to make money. Interesting.
It's a fun activity for the kids, but they are lazy and don't try to up the bar even a little and that's too bad considering where they are located, they have natural sea water at their disposal (a limiting factor for some landlocked aquariums) and that seems a waste.
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We went for Father's Day, & had a great time. The little ones probably enjoyed the water play area the most. I personally enjoyed all of it, but my favorite was the exotic array of seahorses. Truly amazing, & absolutely beautiful. It may be a little pricey, but in my opinion, very much worth it, I saw things I otherwise would have never seen. I'd like to go back.
Having just went to the aquarium in NOLA last week, I thought I would check out the Florida Aquarium.
having bought a ticket to the Ice hockey game earlier, I had a coupon for $5.00 off. If you don't have a coupon, stop in any hotel or tourist shop and you can find a book with a free coupon book. With a ice hockey game tonight, there were a lot of people wearing Lightning jerseys.
it must be dads day at the game because there seemed to be a lot of dads with their sons walking around. This aquarium reminded me a lot of the one in NOLA. Lots of little fish, frogs turtles and sea horses. I saw alligators and my favorite part was the coral reef. Where NOLA had catfish, Tampa had octopi and the coral reef.
Debbie L. has it right, after a short tour, you are done. I would recommend brining a nice camera and some comfortable walking shoes.
At least I get to talk to the fishies again...
It's not a huge aquarium compared to the monsters I'm used to like Monterey Bay and the NY Aquarium, but it's staff are super enthusiastic. Particularly amusing was the diving show, where it looked like a hungry grouper was stalking the fingers of the slightly nervous diver. And the Dipping Dot's station.
My favorite display in this Aquarium is probably the Sea Dragon exhibit showing off all sorts of exotic sea horses and sea dragons. This place also has it traditional Florida fare of American alligators. There was also a great little exhibit on aquariums at home, that showed off some tetras and various tropical fish in some cleverly put together aquarium tanks.
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The aquarium was very cool - but for what you get for the price...?
I'd definitely recommend trying to find parking on the street. We went past where the cruise parking was and parked on the street. This saved us $5. Then right outside the aquarium there are some free maps. Make sure to grab one because you can get $3 off for up to I believe 6 people.
The animals are definitely very cute and the exhibits are good - but we thought that overall it was a bit small. It's definitely a great place to go to learn about animals and just the fact that it is a recovery aquarium - they help rehap the animals.
It was fun, but definitely not worth $20+ dollars to see all of the animals that I can walk outside and see. It would be good for people from another country or from up North to see. We looked at everything and it only took us 1.5 hours to go through the whole place, I was hoping more for a half day experience, like a the zoo. The penguins were really cute! We walked around the area afterwards looking for some decent shopping or lunchtime spot, all we saw were Russian gangsters in tracksuits and gold chains giving us the eye.
Fun, but not "OMG FUN"...ya know? It's a bit pricey and it really doesn't have repetitive fun value. It's a one-time thing.
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This was the first aquarium I'd ever been to, when I was little, and I've made a point to come back every time I'm in the area.
It's not a huge place, like Alice said, but they have a well-chosen selection of animals to see. Typical aquarium fare like river otters, sharks, penguins, alligators, coral, and lots and lots of fish. While they don't have a lot of each animal, the animals all look healthy. I've been to zoos and aquariums before where animals look sick and miserable - not the case here.
Another neat feature of this aquarium is how the "exhibit" the penguins. Instead of building a large viewing tank for them (as is the case with other exhibits) they bring them out for a short time. It's pretty neat them up close, with no glass between you.
Even though this isn't huge, it's a good way to spend an afternoon. I'll come back, and I'd love it if they acquired another octopus.
One of the prettiest aquariums I have ever been to. I love the indoor landscaping! You could easily spend an entire day here watching the shows and looking at the exhibits!
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Our trip to Florida was a bit happy hectic with tons of family, a trip to Orlando and KIDS, KIDS, KIDS everywhere. A trip to The Florida Aquarium was the best part of our entire week trip. With no high expectations, I was truly amazed. I love this aquarium! The place exhibits it's natural wildlife perfectly and just shows how different the ocean creatures are to those of California. I loved the manta ray touch pools. The rays literally beg to be touched unlike the rays at Monterey Bay Aquarium. They even had to give the rays a bit of a break to calm them down. The alligators were amazing, and it was so thrilling to get face to face with them behind the glass. We were even given a chance to touch a baby alligator with a volunteer who walked around. The kids enjoyed a quick educational lecture with a few african penguins while the adults sat and rocked in rocking chairs. One thing we didn't get to experience was the outdoor water park, which I'm sure is necessary to cool off children on hot humid summer days. Hopefully we'll visit once more to experience everything The Florida Aquarium has to offer. This aquarium is beautiful and so true to Florida.
