Overall, I had a nice time, and snapped some cool pics with my phone - some are a bit blurry due to the dim lighting, them being taken with a camera phone, and my being not very steady-handed, lol.
I will say, the aquarium seems a bit overpriced- regular adult admission is $18, as much as the Phoenix Zoo charges, and it's not all that big. They do offer a discount for college students with school I.D., though, which is nice, so I was able to get in for $16 (plus tax, naturally- so really $18, instead of $20).
What they do have is pretty cool, though- I timed it right by going when they had the seahorse feeding (they have those three days per week, check their website for details if you're planning to go)- which was very, very cool. The seahorses are awesome- of course they are, they're seahorses!- and you get a great view of them eating. Warning: they eat brine shrimp, in case you didn't know, which are the same thing as Sea Monkeys....so if you think it would bother you to see beautiful seahorses sucking up adorable Sea Monkeys with their little tubular mouths like tiny vacuum cleaners, give it a skip. I'm kidding, don't skip it! What's your problem!? Geez, the seahorses gotta eat, dammit!! Seriously, though, it's a really awesome sight- if you go, check it out!
They also have a rock pool, where you can touch the star fish, hermit crabs, etc....what they don't have is towels for you to dry your hands on after, lol....although, here's a tip: before you give up and dry your dripping, fish-tank-smelling hands on your pants (like I did)- if you walk a few more feet, there is a hand sanitizer dispenser. You're welcome.
There's one of those really cool tunnels where you walk through a big tank of rays and little sharks. It's plastic or whatever all around, even on the floor, which is trippy- they swim right underneath you!
They have very cool eels, but it was too dark to get a good pic- I totally wanted to burst into song, "Eels! Eels! Eels up inside ya, findin' an entrance where they can...."
I had to laugh when I saw that one of the tanks in the crab/lobster room contains a Maine lobster....LOL...just like in a restaurant tank. I almost wanted to put him in my pocket and take him home for dinner- but I figured I'd probably get caught and/or get my downstairs mix-up lobster-claw-pinched all to hell. (NOT a fetish of mine, I'll have you know. Lobsters are "mmm-mmm good" dipped in butter, but I'll thank them to keep their claws off my clamburger.)
Here's some pics I took, for your viewing enjoyment:
awesome yellow seahorse
awesome black seahorse (seahorses are a personal favorite of mine, if you couldn't tell, lol)
the giant crabs!!- the poster on the wall nick-names them Crabzilla
to get a sense of how massive they truly are, here's one of me in front of the tank... I'm closer to the camera than the crab, so, it's even bigger than it looks- the body of the biggest one (seen here) is probably the size of my head!!
some kind of cool bright red shrimp- can't remember what it was called.....the Latin word for "fire-engine-red-shrimp", perhaps, or maybe Jeff
the jelly-fish tank....oooohhh, aahhhh....seriously cool, I could've probably stared at it for hours, just grooving on it
close-up of a jelly-fish, just beautiful
Sadly, one thing they didn't have, that they advertise on their website, was an octopus....Their website talks about their awesome giant pacific octopus, Loki, and how you've just got to see her- however, when I got to the end, there had been no octopus at all. I asked about it, and was told that they had had trouble with the warm-water tank for their warm-water octopus, and so had switched it out for a cold-water octopus, and that the new, tiny, cold-water octopus had arrived but had to be kept secluded in quarantine for a month before being debuted in display. I love octopuses, so was completely crushed and very disappointed, almost to the point of bitterly weeping. I still think it's very uncool that no mention of this was made on their website, nor at the front before you pay to go in. I appeased myself a bit by going back to stare at the jelly-fish tank for awhile more, until it was getting closer to the time for the seahorse feeding show, and then I mozied on back to the seahorse area (oddly named "the temple of the seahorse" -?-) and waited for that to begin.
So, in tribute to Loki the octopus, and to all octopuses everywhere, here is a cool pic from their website:
Speaking of octopuses, and their general awesomeness and bad-assery, I'm seriously considering getting a tattoo of one on my left shoulder/upper arm. Have you ever noticed how they have those eyes with the rectangular pupils, like a goat's eyes? How cool is that?
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