This Halloween, escape the cold and explore around the world through five continents filled with animals that you can feed and touch., SeaQuest is running a special ticket price where all tickets are $9.95 for students instead of the usual $14.
After waiting in a ten-minute line, then getting up front to the checkout counter, the entrance doesn’t have a student discount listed. There definitely is a student discount, along with a military one. You will be asked if you wish to buy tokens to be able to feed the animals, but at five dollars apiece, they aren’t worth it. There will be food machines throughout the exhibit and if you jiggle the knob of the machines sometimes food will come out, but it isn’t necessary to have a good time.
The entire exhibit will waft you in the hot aroma of wet animal and fish. The smell isn’t nauseating for the hour that I spent there, but it isn’t the most pleasant smell in the world.
Animals range from snakes to rabbits to a large bird exhibit that guests can walk into. Most animals are encouraged to be touched and fed. I almost body checked a small child to get to the stingray tank so I could touch one. I wanted to be able to say I touched one, and the small child was a bit surprised when I took up the ledge that he was going to stand on.
The demographic for SeaQuest is a bunch of tiny children who have no control over their volume and who seem to always be in the exactly wrong spot as you try to walk, but the animals make it worth it.
Many of the sea creatures were unique and interesting, such as two different tanks with eels that could have been in the Little Mermaid movie. Two otters were sleeping in the corner as a whole koi pond waited to be fed by guests. An octopus was hanging on a worker who was standing beside its tank.
There were plenty of workers milling around to answer questions and help with the animals. Some of the animal’s cages could be explored in depth with a worker present. There was a whole lizard exhibit that could have been explored, but out of fear of stepping on a lizard or reacting a scene from Holes, I avoided that exhibit. Another exhibit that could be explored was a large bird cage. There were probably about thirty birds that flew around the guests who wanted to hazard the cage.
Overall, SeaQuest is the epitome of small aquarium places, but the unique animals that guests have the ability to touch and get close to is worth going at least once. And now that there’s a special on tickets, there’s more of an excuse to go.