Disclaimer – We have received this item for free or on a loan basis for the purpose of this review/feature but all words and opinions are our own.
When it comes to summer holidays, the weather is always better the week before children break up from school, making it difficult to book things to do! The SEA LIFE Aquarium London is the safest bet yet for planning as it’s completely indoors and therefore weatherproof!
Located on the South Bank, in the old County Hall building and next to The London Eye (giant ferris wheel) there is plenty to do in the area. Book tickets to SEA LIFE Aquarium online and you can reserve your entrance time and plan your day ahead, including transport.
The SEA LIFE Aquarium starts with the Atlantic section. There are more than 10 sections throughout the aquarium including Antarctica and Rainforests, acting as a tour around the world via aquatic life. The aquarium follows a path where you meet fish and sea creatures in different tanks with informative digital displays that tell you the fish contained within the tank as well as information about their habitat and how endangered they are. There are all sorts of fish, star fish, lobsters and other animals to look at which the children found fascinating and there was certainly something for everybody. You can read as much or as little about the species as you like, or just watch them swim around. Photos are also possible.
As you travel round more tanks, you come to the main attraction of the underwater exhibition – a huge tank containing sharks, turtles and stingray! There are ample windows around the tank and seating points for small children as well as adults to be able to sit and watch, or in the case of most children, to sit and point at the animals. The sharks are seriously impressive due to their size and their elegance but the turtles are huge, and look just like Crush in Finding Nemo! The stingray and turtles swim around and come up to the glass to ‘greet’ onlookers which makes for some fabulous photos. Some of the sharks swim too, but there are a couple of basking sharks at the bottom of the tank which you can see up close.
Walking around the rest of the exhibitions, there’s an area with Ben Fogel talking about the habitats of the rainforest, an area of rockpools where you can touch shark eggs and star fish and learn about their lifecycles from a member of staff. We loved hearing about how the turtles in the main display were rescued from a turtle farm and brought to London and got to see a real turtle shell, its skeleton and be able to touch it.
The displays are interspersed with different types of interactions, professional photos, a virtual reality lab and activities for children of all ages. We saw babies being carried forward facing so that they could look into the tanks and toddlers being able to watch the motion of the fish for what must have seemed like hours to them!
For both adults and children, the best display has to be the penguins. A large pool with an equally large area of hardstanding behind big glass walls houses the penguin colony who were entertaining and inquisitive. They didn’t seem to mind the number of people watching them and seemed genuinely nosy and came face-to-face with the public with no fear. We watched for ages as they did dove into the pool, swam for fun, swam for hunting and then hopped out of the water onto the ground. There’s ice being churned out all the time to keep them cool and the viewing window (a globe above ground where children can stand and watch them) was especially good fun. The children loved the antics of the penguins and how close they could get to them and we loved watching them. I could sit there for hours!
Before finishing, you go through a sea of jellyfish too, which were magical and fascinated the smaller children with their illuminous properties. The SEA LIFE Aquarium finished with a huge gift shop selling all sorts of soft toys, mugs and keyrings as well as more for the grown-ups. You can purchase the photos at this stage too before walking out to South Bank where you are right next to the London Eye and Shrek’s Adventure.
It took us about 2 hours to walk round the whole exhibition with stopping to see the fish in each display, taking photos and roughly reading the information boards. By the end of the day, we were buzzing from all the sights and sounds of the aquarium and being able to see animals and fish we would never usually get to see in London. It’s a fabulous day out!
Tickets available online at: https://www.visitsealife.com/london/
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