Monday, June 14, 2010

Sealife Aquarium

Mister C, Master J and I were in California for work (Mister C) and pleasure (Master J and I) this past week/weekend. Master J desperately wanted to go to Legoland and has been asking about it for a while now. After we agreed, we looked it up. Note to other parents, look it up first. After we got over the shock of the price of admission and put our appliances up for collateral on a large loan, we decided that this past Saturday was the perfect day to hit the place. For a (relatively) small additional price, you can also go to the Sealife Aquarium which is on the same grounds.

The aquarium opens an hour before Legoland itself does, which is really a nice plan. We arrived at 9:00 am on the nose and parked about twenty spots out in row two. We got right in to the aquarium and I have to say, I was more impressed than I thought I would be. It's not excessively huge or anything, but it's laid out in such a way that it seems bigger than it probably is. There's one huge main tank, but I think there must be ten different ways to see into it. One area is a tube that you can walk through where all the fish are swimming around and over you. That's pretty cool. There's all sorts of little "peep hole" type windows that Master J just loved.

The best part was that there were lego creations everywhere. There were even scuba divers in the tank that were completely made of legos. The only bad thing was it was kind of hard to take any decent pictures of the fish because most of the tanks were convex. Between the aquarium and the main park, I took almost six hundred pictures. Most of them were in the main park but I still took at least a hundred in the aquarium and I only ended up with a half dozen decent ones of the fish.

It took us about an hour to get all the way through at which point we headed over to the main attraction. More on that tomorrow. For today, here's a few photos.


Master J touching some kind of sea critter. He wasn't too keen on sticking his hand in there, but he did eventually do it.



Lionfish. I think.



Master J hanging out above a tank of sting rays and small sharks. This room was set up like something from an Indiana Jones movie, complete with lego Indie.



No idea.
Update: I still have no idea but Bo believes it to be some kind of Damsel. Thank you!




Master J in one of the hidey holes. This one could look up into the big tank almost from the bottom.



Puffer fish.



Master J "under water" in a pop up viewing area inside one of the smaller tanks.



Some other cool looking fish.
Update: this is a bangaii cardinal (thanks again Bo!)

4 comments:

Madison said...

You did get some good photos though didn't you. Glad to see you are back. i was waiting for your next post. I'd love to see some of the photos that show the lego scuba divers. I bet those were cool.

Anonymous said...

Legos in the bath tub, hmm,is there a similarity here:-) Awesome pics glad you all had such a good time beautifully captured by your camera skills.

Bo said...

"No idea" is a toughie, mostly because of the angle. I'm guessing it's a damsel of some kind.

"Some other cool looking fish" is a bangaii cardinal.

Cool shots!

Mirth said...

Thanks for the compliments all and for the help Bo. I'm sure there were descriptions next to each fish letting visitors know what kind it was but honestly I get a little "Ooohhh! Cooool!" and forget to look most times.