Saturday, March 6, 2010

Newport Aquarium

Once you take your kids to an aquarium they form a type of addiction. Ever since last years visit to the Virginia Beach Aquarium Anna has been dropping little hints to visit the one right in our own backyard. Well, right down I75, anyway. My only reservation has been the cost of those darn aquariums. I know, it must cost a fortune to keep them up and running, but $22 dollars for a one time adult admission hurts a little bit. Good thing they offered a senior discount for Grams and Gramps - $21 each. Gee. I think I will send a little note to the aquarium about being a little more senior friendly!!
We had a great time despite the admission fee. Just look at Gram's face in the above picture!! Pure joy at feeding the lorikeets in the Rainforest Exhibit! We call her "The Bird Whisperer". I think we will put her out by the hummingbird feeder this summer and see if she gets one to land on her finger!! Thank you Gramps for buying the bird food. Maybe next time it will be included in the price of admission! After Anna got over the fear of being pooped upon she really enjoyed this. By far I think this was Gram's favorite but Anna's favorite was the Shark Touch Pool. We had visited other aquariums with stingray touch tanks but this was fun and unique. They gave a little lesson about the two finger touch system and then we were free to pet away. The only thing we had to watch out for was the spitting shark. Picture below. He was pretty funny!

All the exhibits at the Newport Aquarium were very well done. The jellyfish were awesome and the frog bog was pretty cool, too. We were slightly disappointed in the penguin parade. I guess we thought that the penguins would be walking in the parade and not riding in a wagon. Bad assumption on my part! If I had thought about it more, letting those little penguins walk on their own would mean a lot of clean up for some poor aquarium worker.
So, final review. Definitely save up some money and head to the Newport Aquarium. Your family will have a great time exploring. Since our daughter is aquarium addicted... I think we may have to include aquarium costs in our yearly family budget.

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