Description: We visited this aquarium on a wet and windy Friday afternoon with an 8 year old and two 3 year olds. It is very easy to find, being just on the Grand Parade in Tynemouth overlooking the long sandy beach. It was very quiet inside with only a few other visitors. We dutifully paid (a bit of advice, search online for discount vouchers, we got one that gave us 20% off) and went into the first section, which had pirhanas and other freshwater fish.
We were then straight into a section with British fish species, rays, sharks, lobsters and crayfish, which we good to look at from my point of view, but the kids ran straight past most of it. Around another corner the giant king crab had disappeared (obviously died) since my last visit, leaving a couple of essentially boring fish. We then rounded a corner to look at some teeny tiny seahorses, anemones and some octopie. Then we were straight into the asian short-clawed otters, which were entertaining to watch, but didn't really capture the kids attention for very long.
Around another corner there were a couple of tropical fish displays, focusing on fish from the Disney film Finding Nemo, which obviously the children loved. Although I seem to remember some box and cow fish from a previous section and I always found them far more entertaining than clown fish.
The next section was supposed to be about the Amazon and had a few monkeys, although I don't really see how they fit into an aquarium. There were also some frogs, chameleons and other amphibians that entertained the kids for about 2 seconds. The next tank was supposed to have a giant pacific octopus, which is advertised on the website, but once again it had disappeared. Luckily for us there was a new section that had some captive grey seals outside, that were lovely to watch. Then it's just the tunnel through the big tropical tank and your done.
I suppose to children who have never seen marine animals before may be quite entertained, but personally I found the aquarium overpriced. In fact the kids we were with were just as happy on the beach outside running up and down. So in my opinion it wasn't worth the outlay in cash to visit this aquarium, it was very disappointing and there were no staff members engaging with the public. A real disappointment!
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