Don’t let the Zombie Fish deter you from hitting up the Cleveland Aquarium

Several weeks ago my two teenagers and I got up much earlier than they would have liked to on a Saturday to enjoy the morning at The Cleveland Aquarium. And when I say much earlier than they would have liked, I am pretty sure that anytime before noon would have been unacceptable.  Plus side they napped peacefully on the way home.

The Cleveland Aquarium is located in the Cleveland First Energy Powerhouse building and from the outside it doesn’t actually look like a traditional aquarium.  The building was actually built during the 19th century and provided power for the city of Cleveland.  It’s very industrial and I love how the designers of the aquarium incorporated things like the smoke stacks into exhibits.

When isn’t it a good time to get your photo taken with a six-foot sea-horse?

After we were greeted by a six-foot sea-horse where the girls declined to get their photo taken claiming it wasn’t the right time for them, we were welcomed with a buffet style breakfast, which the girls happily devoured.

Once we finished with breakfast and a special presentation by our hosts, we were invited to enjoy the Cleveland Aquarium exhibits at our own pace.  Sadly our pace didn’t match up with the pace of some of my friends who also happened to be at the event, but I was thankful for the time I had with my girls enjoying the aquarium.

It was really neat to watch Giggles walk around exhibits to get just the right angle of her subjects.  The Chicken liked to inform me what everything was called and read the information on the placards that were by each exhibit. In fact when we saw the Scorpion Fish at the aquarium I had to ask her to repeat herself and I asked her several times if she was sure that the placard actually went with the exhibit that we were looking at, because really, they looked like Zombie fish.

Tell me that this doesn’t look like a zombie

The Cleveland Aquarium website tells you to plan about an hour and a half for your visit, and that is just about how long it took us to get through the whole thing.  There was a bit of time when I thought we were going to be stuck at the touch tanks for the rest of the day when Giggles proclaimed that she wasn’t going to leave there until she touched the shark that was swimming with the sting rays.  Thankfully she gave up that battle for another day.

One thing that I heard from many people who had visited the aquarium before I did was that they enjoyed the visit overall, they were just unhappy about the price and that they had to pay for parking.  I admit that I would probably be hesitant to go on my own because of the fact that my children are no longer considered children in the admission based world, but looking at admission page, I would strongly consider an annual pass for our family. It would pay for itself on our 2nd visit and you get several perks with pass membership.

You, too, can take crazy pictures with your shark if you win!

If you still aren’t convinced that you should try it out then you might be excited to hear that I am giving out 4 tickets to the Cleveland Aquarium and your very own Mr. Shark. (Scrambled eggs and plate are not included.) To enter simply visit the Cleveland Aquarium’s website and tell me what thing you would be most excited to see while you are there.  If you want to tweet about this giveaway, please make sure to include @CLEaquarium and @hdurdil (that’s me!) in your tweet and leave an extra comment letting me know that you did that.  This contest will be open until July 20th, when I will close down comments and pick a winner using random.org.

Disclosure-Cleveland Aquarium provided tickets, parking and breakfast so that we could experience the exhibits. All opinions are my own and there is certainly no fishy business going on here.