Antimony96
Well-Known Member
My day today did not start very well. Woken up early by a fire alarm in my building. I try to go back to sleep (it's a day off) but--nope--power went out in my building for unrelated reasons. So I decided to visit the aquarium, because what else am I going to do on a free weekday afternoon? After spending a couple hours with my parents, who are on the way, I crossed the Delaware to Camden and its Adventure Aquarium, my second-ever visit. It's on the pricier side for institutions I've visited--admission is $40 for adults including tax--but is it worth it?
The entire aquarium is a single large three-story building. The first floor is just the lobby plus a banquet room for private services; the animals are all on the second and third floors. Everything is kind of scattered, so there's no intended order, but I would suggest going to the right first, to zones A and B (C is the third floor while D is on the left). The first thing to catch your eye after the overpriced food court will probably be a touch tank for bamboo and carpet sharks. Further to the right is a forked path to two more exhibits--a large room with a stingray and guitarfish touch pool in the center, and adjacent to it the aquarium's only outdoor exhibit, for 35 or so African penguins. I went to the penguins first. There's signage highlighting different individual penguins and their character traits each day, plus an underwater viewing (but none of the penguins were swimming). Next to it was a small playground for very young children, and a butterfly garden that I didn't bother with.
After passing through a set of doors that take you from the outside directly into the stingray room, I spent a bit of time with the rays (again, it's what you'd expect), then turned back past the shark touch pool to an extremely small Amazon-themed area, consisting of a sad yellow-headed amazon on a stick (they have three other parrots, which rotate in the exhibit daily) and a fairly small Amazon tank with piranhas, pacu, freshwater stingrays, and a few other larger species, with an artificial rainstorm on a 10 or 15 minute cycle. Past this are a few turtle tanks, an empty kookaburra habitat (small, but better than the parrot's), and one of the real highlights of the aquarium, a colony of little blue penguins, a fairly uncommon sight in North American zoos and aquariums. The were a good bit more active than the Africans, though most were still huddled together. Past the penguins is a decent Caribbean reef section, including among other things moray eel, pufferfish, parrotfish, seahorses, upside-down jellyfish, spiny lobsters, and invasive lionfish.
Past this is the aquarium's centerpiece, the Ocean Realm, a 760,000 gallon tank containing fish of all shapes and sizes from blue tang to groupers to stingrays, as well as a trio of sea turtles (two green, one loggerhead). The star here is another relative rarity--an adolescent great hammerhead shark who was quite eager to show himself to guests. Past the largest viewing area, which has a small auditorium and sometimes holds shows, is a room educating guests on sea turtles and also containing a tank of moon jellies with several plastic bags placed with them to demonstrate how sea turtles mistake litter for food.
This spat me back by the bamboo shark touch tank, whereupon I crossed the food court to Zone D, which, in what Adventure Aquarium might be most notorious for, is home to two female Nile hippos named Button and Genny in an entirely indoor habitat. While the infamous disco theming is gone, the habitat is extremely small, with a pitiful land section and an underwater section which follows the trend of prioritizing an underwater view above all else. The Jules Verne Gallery is a small hallway loosely themed around living fossils (the left side has an evolution timeline with a focus on dinosaurs and marine reptiles) and, uh, "scary" species (wolf eel, jellyfish, giant Pacific octopus, a blue American lobster)? After this is a large shark tunnel, including the expected species like sand tiger, nurse, and blacktip reef sharks. The tunnel is short, and it's hardly a unique idea, but it's mesmerizing all the same. After the tunnel and a couple more viewing windows is a small gallery of educational stations, a collage of shark-related newspaper headlines, logos, and cartoons, and the way into the gift shop, where I did not buy anything.
Last on my visit was Zone C, which takes up the top floor, and is the children's zoo, with much of the floor being taken up by small coral reef tanks with the obligatory Finding Nemo species, and themed around a PBS Kids show called Splash and Bubbles. A radio speaker tormented me with songs about friendship for my entire time on this floor, and the walls are decorated with friendly cartoon fish, but otherwise it's not fundamentally much different from the rest of the aquarium. A smaller room containing a touch tank for horseshoe crabs was a treat, and the frog hall consists mostly of common zoo species (including non-frogs in an axolotl, emperor newts, and a matamata turtle) but I'm extremely easy to please with anything related to reptiles and amphibians, and the exhibits had solid presentation. The last exhibit here, and the last of my tour, was for a Cuvier's dwarf caiman, which offered a perfect underwater viewing that let me see everything from its head at the surface to its dangling legs and tail towards the bottom of the pool.
The biggest thing I took from Adventure Aquarium was that, even more than most zoos and aquariums, and even outside the aforementioned top floor, it's extremely oriented towards young children. Music is playing everywhere. Every screen advertises a game or activity being held in the aquarium. There's music of some kind being played everywhere. Exhibits with naturalistic theming (or more cliched shipwreck themes) have their immersion broken by the omnipresence of pumpkins and gourds (including a cute pumpkin frog above the Amazon tank), which after Thanksgiving are swapped out for fake presents plus a scuba-diving Santa Claus. Otherwise, most of the aquarium is solid, with its worst exhibits being for certain more zoo-y animals (the hippo and the parrot-on-a-stick), but very little stands out as unique, something that arguably plagues aquariums even more than zoos in this country. The shark tunnel--check. The coral reef tanks with the obligatory clownfish and anemone and blue tang--check. The Stingray Bay--check. The biggest draw for zoo nerds is probably the little blue penguin colony, though Bronx isn't too far away. Otherwise, it's alright as an experience but, despite what it claims (and was probably the result of aggressively bugging members to vote) in regards to being the best aquarium in the Northeast and something like the third best in the country, doesn't stand out as one of the country's greats (most would probably say Shedd and Mystic, respectively). The Philadelphia Zoo is far from a perfect institution, but has more enough unique offerings and charm to make me want to visit one or more times a year. With Adventure Aquarium, I have basically zero interest in revisiting in the medium-term.
(pics coming later)
The entire aquarium is a single large three-story building. The first floor is just the lobby plus a banquet room for private services; the animals are all on the second and third floors. Everything is kind of scattered, so there's no intended order, but I would suggest going to the right first, to zones A and B (C is the third floor while D is on the left). The first thing to catch your eye after the overpriced food court will probably be a touch tank for bamboo and carpet sharks. Further to the right is a forked path to two more exhibits--a large room with a stingray and guitarfish touch pool in the center, and adjacent to it the aquarium's only outdoor exhibit, for 35 or so African penguins. I went to the penguins first. There's signage highlighting different individual penguins and their character traits each day, plus an underwater viewing (but none of the penguins were swimming). Next to it was a small playground for very young children, and a butterfly garden that I didn't bother with.
After passing through a set of doors that take you from the outside directly into the stingray room, I spent a bit of time with the rays (again, it's what you'd expect), then turned back past the shark touch pool to an extremely small Amazon-themed area, consisting of a sad yellow-headed amazon on a stick (they have three other parrots, which rotate in the exhibit daily) and a fairly small Amazon tank with piranhas, pacu, freshwater stingrays, and a few other larger species, with an artificial rainstorm on a 10 or 15 minute cycle. Past this are a few turtle tanks, an empty kookaburra habitat (small, but better than the parrot's), and one of the real highlights of the aquarium, a colony of little blue penguins, a fairly uncommon sight in North American zoos and aquariums. The were a good bit more active than the Africans, though most were still huddled together. Past the penguins is a decent Caribbean reef section, including among other things moray eel, pufferfish, parrotfish, seahorses, upside-down jellyfish, spiny lobsters, and invasive lionfish.
Past this is the aquarium's centerpiece, the Ocean Realm, a 760,000 gallon tank containing fish of all shapes and sizes from blue tang to groupers to stingrays, as well as a trio of sea turtles (two green, one loggerhead). The star here is another relative rarity--an adolescent great hammerhead shark who was quite eager to show himself to guests. Past the largest viewing area, which has a small auditorium and sometimes holds shows, is a room educating guests on sea turtles and also containing a tank of moon jellies with several plastic bags placed with them to demonstrate how sea turtles mistake litter for food.
This spat me back by the bamboo shark touch tank, whereupon I crossed the food court to Zone D, which, in what Adventure Aquarium might be most notorious for, is home to two female Nile hippos named Button and Genny in an entirely indoor habitat. While the infamous disco theming is gone, the habitat is extremely small, with a pitiful land section and an underwater section which follows the trend of prioritizing an underwater view above all else. The Jules Verne Gallery is a small hallway loosely themed around living fossils (the left side has an evolution timeline with a focus on dinosaurs and marine reptiles) and, uh, "scary" species (wolf eel, jellyfish, giant Pacific octopus, a blue American lobster)? After this is a large shark tunnel, including the expected species like sand tiger, nurse, and blacktip reef sharks. The tunnel is short, and it's hardly a unique idea, but it's mesmerizing all the same. After the tunnel and a couple more viewing windows is a small gallery of educational stations, a collage of shark-related newspaper headlines, logos, and cartoons, and the way into the gift shop, where I did not buy anything.
Last on my visit was Zone C, which takes up the top floor, and is the children's zoo, with much of the floor being taken up by small coral reef tanks with the obligatory Finding Nemo species, and themed around a PBS Kids show called Splash and Bubbles. A radio speaker tormented me with songs about friendship for my entire time on this floor, and the walls are decorated with friendly cartoon fish, but otherwise it's not fundamentally much different from the rest of the aquarium. A smaller room containing a touch tank for horseshoe crabs was a treat, and the frog hall consists mostly of common zoo species (including non-frogs in an axolotl, emperor newts, and a matamata turtle) but I'm extremely easy to please with anything related to reptiles and amphibians, and the exhibits had solid presentation. The last exhibit here, and the last of my tour, was for a Cuvier's dwarf caiman, which offered a perfect underwater viewing that let me see everything from its head at the surface to its dangling legs and tail towards the bottom of the pool.
The biggest thing I took from Adventure Aquarium was that, even more than most zoos and aquariums, and even outside the aforementioned top floor, it's extremely oriented towards young children. Music is playing everywhere. Every screen advertises a game or activity being held in the aquarium. There's music of some kind being played everywhere. Exhibits with naturalistic theming (or more cliched shipwreck themes) have their immersion broken by the omnipresence of pumpkins and gourds (including a cute pumpkin frog above the Amazon tank), which after Thanksgiving are swapped out for fake presents plus a scuba-diving Santa Claus. Otherwise, most of the aquarium is solid, with its worst exhibits being for certain more zoo-y animals (the hippo and the parrot-on-a-stick), but very little stands out as unique, something that arguably plagues aquariums even more than zoos in this country. The shark tunnel--check. The coral reef tanks with the obligatory clownfish and anemone and blue tang--check. The Stingray Bay--check. The biggest draw for zoo nerds is probably the little blue penguin colony, though Bronx isn't too far away. Otherwise, it's alright as an experience but, despite what it claims (and was probably the result of aggressively bugging members to vote) in regards to being the best aquarium in the Northeast and something like the third best in the country, doesn't stand out as one of the country's greats (most would probably say Shedd and Mystic, respectively). The Philadelphia Zoo is far from a perfect institution, but has more enough unique offerings and charm to make me want to visit one or more times a year. With Adventure Aquarium, I have basically zero interest in revisiting in the medium-term.
(pics coming later)
