Discovering Vancouver Aquarium

by Nadia LeeNov 9, 2015

When looking up things to do in Vancouver, you’ll usually see the Vancouver Aquarium on the list as it’s a popular attraction located within Stanley Park and appropriate for all ages.

After lunch on Sunday we headed over the the Vancouver Aquarium around 1 pm to check out everything it had to offer!

The hours of the aquarium is 10 am – 5 pm. Tickets were $29 each and there are two options for you to purchase tickets when you arrive, either a self serve machine (very easy to use and there is someone standing by to help if necessary) or the traditional ticket counter.

In my opinion, use the self service machine, much faster! Also when we went in April, there is a promotion happening where we can actually go back for free anytime before May so technically a 2 for 1, fantastic for folks looking to spend a more time there or revisit again!

Vancouver Aquarium Exterior

First Impressions

In terms of size, the aquarium itself is OK. Nothing too huge; we were able to walk a majority of the shows and walk around the exhibits taking numerous of photos/videos all within the span of 4 hours (you honestly won’t need more than that).

Schedule

While we were there, we watched the following shows:

Dolphin Training Session
Beluga Training
Sea Otters Education Experience
Shallow Waters
- a 4D movie experience
Shark Show
- with a shark feeding
Penguin Show
Porpoise Experience
- part of the whale/dolphin family

Dolphin Jumping Out of the Water at the Vancouver Aquarium

So all in all we got to see a majority of the shows available. In between the shows we were able to view the various underwater exhibits, the rain forest habitat with lots of birds and different animals and more! Some of my favorite elements of the aquarium were the beluga show (I’ve never actually seen a beluga) and hearing about how the aquarium works to “rescue, rehabilitate and release” animals.

With the Ups, There Must be a Down

One of my least favorite parts about this experience were that parents pretty much let their kids run around all over the place with little supervision making it frustrating for other guests as kids would just push people over to get a better view, scream throughout the whole movie experience or just bypass lines of people in the bathroom without a care in the world.

Though this is not the fault of the aquariums.

Another part of the aquarium that was a negative for me was that the bathrooms were so small. Out of my entire time there I only saw one bathroom facility with 3 stalls which were not very clean. Considering how many people go in and out of the aquarium a day, I hope they consider more bathrooms and having them cleaned on a more regular basis.

That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles

Overall, it was a great experience to do once; however, I honestly think once is all you’ll need but it’s definitely worth checking out and spending half a day to better understand the environment and animals specific to this part of the country.

Small Bright Pinkish Jellyfish at Vancouver Aquarium