Visited Shedd Aquarium. Underimpressed

I've been the the Shedd, but don't really remember it being anything special.

I'm really impressed with the Oklahoma aquarium. I went to visit my parents in Tulsa so we checked it out. I had no expectations, but it's really nice there. They have diverse exhibits, a lot of large local tanks, and a complete wing of tropical, sub tropical. It's arranged to group the animals nicely as well.

Squawkbert said:
GA and TN aquariums are supposed to be among the best.

I was thoroughly impressed w/ the Epcot aquarium (>10 yrs ago). Sea World's Orlando walk through & other exhibits are nice too.
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I got to scuba in the epcot aquarium a few years ago, that was real fun.
 
Cool to see so many people sharing their experiences. I can further add that the Boston Aquarium is really nice (as of when I last visited it 20 years ago ;)).

The Long Beach aquarium is ok, but not great -- pretty small and crowded. If you have plans to visit that, I would say skip it and make the drive down to the San Diego Wild Animal Park (assuming your interests venture beyond the aquatic).
 
so let me ask

Do you have tanks that big at home?

If so I can see why you are unimpressed.

Personally, if I can go to a place where I can see tanks unlike what I have at home I try to appreciate them for what they are not what I want them to be. At any rate I would think a bit of work goes into keeping something like this up and running so I would love to see it!

From what I have heard about shedd it is a nice set up. I mean how often can you get this close to a dolphin!!!

http://www.sheddaquarium.org/explore_by_exhibit.html

Just my 2 cents
 
Totally agree, I went to visit my cousin in Chicago and I was so excited to go see it until i got there. I think it's a perspective thing I've seen alot of pictures of most of the fish so there was little sense of wonder. I was also surprised that they had so much fake coral in the large tanks, only some of the small ones had it. The rainbows were pretty big though and you have to give them credit on the freshwater sections, they had pikes, arapaima and all those little cories, etc.

The most annoying thing was all the volunteer groups with 10 to 20 kids each running around you and yelling and exclaiming to loudly,not to mention they are a tripping hazard.
 
Cool that you got to see the show, there wasn't one when i was there, only the belugas were swimming around.

Totally agree, for an aquarium thats so big it seriously lacks giant saltwater displays with real coral please if the tickets are that expensive. Personally I could do without the stupid theatre shows,they could fit more aquariums in instead.
 
arachnar said:
Totally agree, I went to visit my cousin in Chicago and I was so excited to go see it until i got there. I think it's a perspective thing I've seen alot of pictures of most of the fish so there was little sense of wonder. I was also surprised that they had so much fake coral in the large tanks, only some of the small ones had it. The rainbows were pretty big though and you have to give them credit on the freshwater sections, they had pikes, arapaima and all those little cories, etc.

The most annoying thing was all the volunteer groups with 10 to 20 kids each running around you and yelling and exclaiming to loudly,not to mention they are a tripping hazard.
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but so easy to toss one of them in as a feeder mmmmm good show then :headbang2:
 
Don't get me wrong, the belugas and dolphins were cool and not what you see everyday. To me they weren't worth the entire price of admission. I did see the new Oceanarium downstairs, but wasn't overly impressed with it. They had some nice reef tanks down there, but I've seen similar setups at my LFS as display tanks. There was one really large tank with sharks, but not overly impressive. The freshwater tanks were certainly bigger than what I've got, but the specimens in it weren't that impressive. I've got a tank with 20 neons. They have a bigger tank with 70. So what?

I've seen Tulsa before and was extremely impressed with it. It's not a very large aquarium, but it does have the walk through shark tank (something that Shedd had nothing like or Monterrey either for that matter) and I felt that all of it's exhibits are very high quality. Monterrey is mostly salt water, but that's fine with me since I feel I can see freshwater any day of the week. I can't see 5-6 ft long tuna swimming around everywhere I go.
 
I love Monterey Bay because they have alot of cool invert exhibits. I loved seeing the King Crabs up close and personal
 
Yup everywhere i went around the tourist traps were kids easily victim to the deft swipe of a camera bag:lipssealedsmilie:jk!

The Newport Aquarium in Oregon also had a cool walkway tunnel through the shark exhibit and a tide pool with anenomes. The beaches over there themselves were really cool you could feed the green anenomes on the rocks with snails and look at the little crabs and fish in the tide pools.
 
The Newport Aquarium in KY has a huge tunnel that runs under the aquarium so you see sharks and other saltwater inhabitants swimming all around you and can get up and personal views of them. I really love that aquarium. Here is the link to it:
http://www.newportaquarium.com/
 
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