- stevepage
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- 3 out of 5
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Editor Pick
An Octopuses Garden By The Sea
- October 19, 2009
- Rated 2 of 5 by
Denise Scotland from Scotland, United Kingdom
Deep Sea World in North Queensferry under the iconic Forth Railway Bridge bills itself as Scotland’s national aquarium and a fun filled venue for a family day out. The aquarium is easy to reach by car with ample free parking, a nearby railway station and bus service from Dunfermline. The first thing you will have to do when you arrive, depending on the time of year, is queue up for tickets. There are markers at various points along the queue telling you how long until you will reach the door, expect to wait up to an hour at peak times. You queue along the quarry which is supposed to hold seals but was empty the last time I visited. Spending ages in a queue is not the best way to start a visit anywhere and this is one of the many reasons that we do not visit anymore.
Once you get inside the first area you come to is a main hall containing many tanks of different types of sealife. This is also the location of a pool full of starfish, anemones and flatfish with regular talks and handling sessions. The talks are really interesting with a diver in the pool telling the visitor about the various inhabitants of the tank and answering questions from the audience.
There is a wide variety of marine life on display here. My favourite are the octopus which curl their legs around the objects in their tank and seem to merge with their surroundings. The seahorses are very different from how I imagined them to be swaying around their tanks. The kids will love the clownfish introduced after Finding Nemo became a big hit, just make sure that they don’t try and stick their fingers into the piranha tanks!
The underwater tunnel is 112 metres long and holds over a million gallons of water enclosed safely under 6 inch thick glass panels making it one of the largest underwater tunnels in the world. The underwater aquarium is stocked with British fish like flatfish and mackerel and also houses the sharks which are from Mexico. You are carried along a walkway by a conveyor belt giving the impression of drifting along the seafloor and you are free to step off the belt at any time to take a closer look at anything which has caught your attention. The underwater area is divided into different habitats containing a diverse range of fish representing the different types of marine habitats found in Britain, for example huge eels live in an area with lots of rocks and caves for them to hide.
The tunnel is home to the sand tiger sharks which are obviously well fed as they don’t feel the need to snack on their tank mates. There are regular shark feeding sessions where you can watch the divers in the tanks toss pieces of fish to these large creatures. There are talks accompanying these feeding sessions and the divers do demonstrations for the kids, for example blowing bubbles and making hand signals and waving at people. This is definitely the highlight of the visit.
The Amazing Amphibian exhibition is in a separate room and houses snakes, a small crocodile and tanks of frogs. The colourful little frogs are really interesting to watch with their bright colours and sticky pads on their feet letting them climb up the glass and it is hard to believe how poisonous they are.
The other main attraction is the Amazon Rainforest section which has nice exhibits with audio visual displays and unusual fish like cat fish. There are also electric eels with hands on exhibits all about electricity which are nice to see.
Once you have wandered around Deep Sea World you may well feel peckish and want to head to the café for a meal or snack. The café has huge windows with stunning views across the river Forth but this is about all it has going for it. The cafeteria style self service café has a range of sandwiches and hot meals and drinks. The food is unimaginative and poor quality with options like a kids chicken nugget meal which are massively overpriced and the café itself is far too busy and cluttered.
You need to pass the gift shop on the way out of the centre and here they have a range of plastic toys on display within easy reach of your kids so that they can pester you to buy them.
Deep Sea World is a major tourist attraction and while it has interesting exhibits it is not somewhere that I particularly recommend for a visit. It only takes an hour at most to go around the aquarium and see all of the fish, even going round the exhibits for a second time to squeeze some more value out of the day will only add another half an hour or so onto your visit. The ticket prices are extortionate for what is on offer, an adult ticket costs a whopping £11.75 and a child’s ticket £8.00 so it works out as an expensive attraction to visit and not at all good value for a couple of hours entertainment. For around the same price you can visit either Edinburgh Zoo or Blair Drummond Safari Park and have a full day entertainment instead of just a couple of hours.
Deep Sea World also gets extremely busy during peak times with huge queues to get into the attraction and once you are inside it is very noisy and you will have to fight your way through the crowds to see all of the exhibits. I really think that it is one of the most over hyped attractions within Scotland and you get the feeling that they are only interested in extracting as much cash from the visitor as possible whether they enjoy themselves or not. Kids do enjoy Deep Sea World and on the plus side it is somewhere that you can visit on a cold and wet day but it is still very low down on my list of places to visit in the area.
From journal Family Days Out In Scotland
Editor Pick
Face to Face with a Shark
- September 8, 2009
- Rated 3 of 5 by
MagdaDH from Perth, United Kingdom
Summary: Fascinating but limited aquarium. Ideal for a school trip, not so good as a family day out. It's very expensive, not so good for the little ones, not much of a whole day out. The shark tunnel, seals, and Amazonian display are the highlights.
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DeepSea World, located on the outskirts of Edinburgh in North Queensferry is an interesting place to visit, boasting an excellent underwater tunnel and a decent divers' show with sharks. But it's vastly overpriced, less so for what it has to offer, and more so for how much of a day out you can make of it.
Yes, it has some pretty good sharks in a tunnel, and the seals are good too (in fact, a saving grace), but overall you'd be hard pushed to spend more than two hours inside and it's likely to cost you 40 quid for a family of four (assuming you will resist the gift shop and the cafe).
What you make of the Deepsea World depends hugely on how old your children are, and whether you are looking for a pleasant day out, or a more intense "exhibition" type of attraction.
For older kids or teens who are looking for the exotic, weird and wonderful, it's a definitely a better choice than some of the tame country-park-with-a-few-goats-and-an-ostrich-round-a-playpark that seem to be dotted all around Scotland.
However, for the younger children, the Deepsea world offers only limited interest (although some three year olds are quite impressed by the sharks). They will be bored within the first few minutes of the divers' display, and there is no space for them to run or play. They can easily get lost inside, and the outside seals' area definitely demands that hands be held at all times.
For adults without children it offers the poorest value: at almost GBP 12 a person: it really is not worth it, unless you have a big thing about sharks.
The whole place can be visited in about an hour: an hour and half would be really pushing it. Half a day would include a long drive and a stroll down to the river to admire the Forth Rail Bridge from close-up.
After looking at the sharks in the tunnel and the (very good but small) display of the Amazonian fish, one gets a distinct feeling of "is that it, then?" and is only saved from the feeling of anticlimax by the outdoors seals' centre.
The recommendation really does depend on what you are after and what you are prepared to pay for a 20-minute shark show.
== Practicalities ==
Deep Sea World is in North Queensferry, Fife, just beneath the Forth Rail Bridge.
It is easily accessible and well sign posted and just a mile from the M90, less than an hour's drive from Glasgow, not more than half an hour from Edinburgh and about an hour from Perth.
There are public transport buses to North Queensferry from Edinburgh.
Monday to Friday: 10am-5pm
Saturday and Sunday, Bank Holidays: 10am-6pm
Adults: GBP 11.75
Children of 3 and above: GBP 8.00
Family (2 adults, 2 Children) GBP 38.00
From journal Things to See and Do in Fife
Disappointing Day Out
We travelled from Glasgow to take our 4 children to Deep Sea World and considering the drive and the price of tickets this was quite a disappointing day out for us.
The aquarium is not all bad - some of the exhibits are very interesting, the poisonous frog exhibit, for example and the shark/fish feeding display done by divers who also do underwater tricks was fun to watch.
Unfortunately the aquarium has nothing special, unusual or extraordinary to offer. It is small and dark and some things, like the bare outdoor seal enclosure, were a disappointment.
The cafeteria is unwelcoming, overpriced and the quality of the food on offer was very poor. The picnic area is located on the car park. This is not only the least comfortable place I could imagine to have a picnic, it is also downright dangerous for children.
In summer 2007 there was a small, temporary dinosaur display also located on the car park and this was the highlight of the day for my sons.
There are so many places to visit in Scotland and so many other aquariums that we will definately not be returning to this one.
Rip off!
- May 30, 2008
- Rated 1 of 5 by
reviewer1234 from Leeds, United Kingdom
Well at first it looked and sounded great. The price was £37 for a family ticket which you expect to pay for a fun day out.
Little did we know it would take just 20 minutes to go around. Deep Sea World is tiny. The tunnel but is good but that is the main feature.
The cafe is VERY overpriced, small portions and not very good quality at all.
Overall extremely dissapointing as we were all looking forward to a nice day out but was a massive let down.
Deep Sea World
- July 12, 2002
- Rated 3 of 5 by
stevepage from dundee, United Kingdom
Actually out of Edinburgh, on the side of the River Forth, costs £6.50 to get in to this aquarium complete with sharks, Piranhas and Eels
From journal Out and about in Edinburgh