It is easy to overlook the great places to go in Vancouver when you live here, and it has been some years since we took the kids to the Vancouver Aquarium. So we used our Air-miles to get free tickets and bundled tribe into the truck & headed out to Stanley Park.

What a pleasant surprise greeted us. The new entrance has plenty of room and windows for tickets & if like us; you have pre-paid tickets, you can bypass the queue and go straight in. If you haven’t got tickets, there is also an accessible ticket window, with a knowledgeable staff member who runs through the facilities with you – and, as a bonus, a person with a disability can get in for half price or their attendant can get in for free.

We found all of the exhibits to be structurally accessible – the only problem was beyond the control of the Aquarium & that was other visitors.

Gabe can be very sensitive to surprises, so we were unsure about the 4D theatre. The staff was accommodating and attentive to our needs and let us know that if he was unhappy, there was an easy way to leave. He surprised us all by loving every minute of the show. I won’t spoil it by telling you what happens in there, but the 4D theatre is worth the price of admission alone!

A large number of talks and shows, throughout the day, means that there is always something to see or do. The Amazon gallery has a host of beautiful butterflies and a couple of sloths, see if you can find them among the foliage.

 We found that by dressing Gabe in bright green clothes, he was easier to keep track of in the twilight areas & there were also plenty of quiet corners for a few minutes of downtime, to decompress and bolster for the next area.

Dolphins, penguins & sea otters, jellyfish & sharks – there are an incredible variety of species at the Aquarium and plenty of knowledgeable staff to answer your questions. This is our unimaginatively named new friend Ray

For up to date:

Visit www.Vanaqua.org, or if just want a daily fix of cute and fluffiness you can always check out the Vancouver Aquarium Sea Otter Cam.

2 COMMENTS

  1. I haven’t been to the Aquarium for years. Its just so expensive to get over to the mainland from the island! We do love the Aquarium!

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