Jennifer S.
Yelp
An average experience. I think one visit is sufficient.
On a winter holiday to Auckland, the weather was just sketchy enough that I didn't feel like taking a ferry to Rangitoto, so I chose to take my not-quite-two-year-old here for the day. I will assume that it was crazyhouse because of the July school holidays, that it isn't like that on most days. If it's always madness, I'd give it fewer stars.
The good:
- it's located underground, so it doesn't stick out in the natural environment as much as an above-ground building would
- free shuttle from the ferry building (but also on the Bad list - read on)
- a decent variety of sea life on display, several educational feeding programs during the day
- the tunnel
The bad:
- the crowd. Oh, the humanity.
- NOT pram/stroller friendly. Some places it's just awkward to have one, twice I had to take my son out and carry him and the stroller up steps. They do have wheelchair elevators, but I wasn't going to be That Girl using it with a stroller. There is an accessible bathroom with changing table in which we fit - the regular bathrooms looked pretty small.
- I waited a while before an employee discovered the family/accessible bathroom wasn't occupied, just never got unlocked. Grrrr.
- there is very much an order of operations - it's not like most museums and aquariums where you can visit whatever you like in any order. There's a distinct pathway through the place, and it's difficult to backtrack.
- the value. My little guy was free, but I paid $35.
I've been in world-class aquariums - this one was very good, but it had some negatives.
First, we arrived about 5-10 minutes before the scheduled shuttle departure across from the ferry building. Up pulls a large van, with only 11 seats. The driver explained that their regular bus was undergoing maintenance and that he'd take as many as he could, then turn around and pick up everyone else. He left it up to us to determine who had been waiting the longest. Well, everyone crowded up to the van, and it was clear it was everyone-for-themselves. So I had twenty-plus minutes to kill in the cold with a toddler. So things were already off to a rocky start.
You get a discount if you buy your ticket online and the entrance fee is variable depending on when you go. Naturally, during school holidays, the discount was small, but hey, at least it's a discount. They have a separate line for those who have pre-paid.
The first area is a south-pole exhibit, then on to viewing the penguins. This was the first place where the stroller was clunky. Large viewing windows, but I recommend moving on to the 3rd or 4th, since everyone tends to cluster at the first one.
Other highlights include jellyfish (relatively small display) and seahorses. There was a Finding Dory promotion going on at the time we were there - my child was a little too young for all the activities. I would have preferred to see more colorful reef fish. There is a large manta tank, near the cafe seating. There are a couple small touch tanks, too, where we touched some starfish. The highlight is the underwater tunnel. There's a people mover and a stationary walk. This was another place where the stroller was awkward, but we finally just stood on the people mover and let it take us around. You have sharks, rays, and all kinds of fish swimming around and over you. And it's a pretty long tunnel that loops back on itself.
At risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I reached my saturation point with Other Peoples' Children pretty fast. There is a nice looking play space, but my little one still needs some attention on playgrounds - and it looked way too crazy for me to try to keep him safe in there. It also took a while to get him a spot up at the touch tank. Also, the mere architecture of the place was hard to navigate. I had to backtrack to the bathrooms, which meant swimming upstream against the crowd.
I couldn't find anything I needed to have in the gift shop (shocking for me!), so we left, and of course, to exit, we had to climb more stairs with a stroller. Had my child been smaller, I'd have put him in a carrier and worn him, but he's just in between walking well and getting tired easily. If you're considering taking a pushchair, you'll probably wish you hadn't.
When we exited, I realized we still had twenty minutes before the return shuttle downtown, IF we even got on it - city buses pass by every 5 minutes or so, and that was $4.50 well spent.
Maybe I just went at a poor time, but it seems like the kind of place you could go to once and not need to go again.
