After seeing the Adventure Aquarium from afar while on the Ride the Ducks tour in Philadelphia, we headed back across the Benjamin Franklin Bridge to explore it in person. The aquarium’s claims to fame include housing the largest collection of sharks on the East Coast and being the only aquarium in the world with a hippo exhibit.
The Ocean Realm and the Shark Realm are the two biggest tanks in the aquarium. The Ocean Realm is the larger of the two and houses everything from sting rays to sea turtles. It has huge viewing windows and (my kids favorite!) a window that you can climb in that extends into the tank. Something unique to this aquarium is that you can walk both under and over the shark exhibit. They have a glass tunnel that you can walk through to experience sharks swimming over your head and right next to you, and they have a rope bridge that allows you to walk directly over the tank. Shark Bridge was definitely a unique experience but had a long wait and was fairly crowded moving through the bridge itself. The nets are thick and surrounded by lots of safety bars. While it was designed this way for obvious (and completely necessary) safety reasons, these features did obscure the view a decent amount so that we found the experience to be more of a novelty than an actual viewing opportunity. The boys preferred the unobstructed viewing from within the glass tunnel.
There were two penguin exhibits and both were big hits – the Little Blue Penguins are housed inside and the African Penguins are in an outdoor enclosure. We got to see the African Penguin feeding and asked some questions of their keepers.
We were super excited to see the hippos but I have to say that they were a bit of a letdown. It was really cool to get to see them but we found their enclosure to be a little depressing. The room was poorly lit and the water was dingy. It was also sad that they had no access to the outside. I expected the boys to want to stay and watch them for a long time but they basically just walked in and out of the exhibit.
Our overall impression of the aquarium sort of mirrored our impression of Hippo Haven. The whole place seemed slightly run down and dirty. The entire building and most of the exhibits seemed to be in need of renovation. We love aquariums and never regret going to one, but we were in and out of this one surprisingly quickly and would not plan to go back (especially given the expensive price tag). It was disappointing because we had heard such great things about it.
While the aquarium itself was a disappointment, the Camden waterfront was a nice surprise. It had a wide, clean path along the water and was bustling with activity in preparation for a concert at the amphitheater later that evening. There were a few other family attractions (including Battleship NJ, the Camden Children’s Garden, and a minor league baseball stadium) that would make for an interesting return visit. And the views of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and the city of Philadelphia were impressive.
