| rev:text
| - Today we decided to do a date with my wife at Ripley's Aquarium. Since it is new, the line ups are horrendously long, fortunately the weather cooperated. You also see some meal trucks that are cash only near the line ups, but they are cash only and I don't recommend it because if your bladder becomes full, it's going to be an annoying wait.
When coming here for the winter season, I would recommend doing the coat check at $2 per coat. The glut of people in there warms up the place making even a sweater + shirt + inner shirt feel balmy. I would drop off my sweater with my coat if I ever do this again. Also PEE! it gets pretty crowded very quickly and it gets hard to move around.
Mind you I have a habit of NOT taking photographs of everything, honestly we can get better photos of animal life on the Internet than our own cameras. It does get annoying to see people clump up too much. My photo preferences are people I am with or fishes that I want to know more about later (NOT EVERY THING). Plus taking pictures you may miss certain events, and if you want to capture those events you're going to hold up the line.
Going there on a weekend is probably a bad idea just because of the "rabble" the people that take photos of everything, clustering up and blocking the path and noisy kids being scolded by their parents. while the grand parents are being smart and letting the kids roam around and have fun.
The first leg of the aquarium is pretty much boring and the rabble cluster there was just as annoying. Though it had this unique fish which I don't know the name of but it looked funny so I took a picture of that one. The first leg also has large lobsters where I was thinking more of how they would satiate me. The other fun thing on the first leg was how cold the water gets. However, I would recommend that if you do go there just look at things, don't try to take photos OF EVERYTHING (aside from those with you) because you're going to impede traffic flow and make it less fun for everyone.
The second leg of the trip where you enter "Dangerous Lagoon" is the highlight of the aquarium. That's where you're literally underwater and see the aquatic life with sharks, stingrays and other aquatic life. The moving pathway wasn't working today, not sure why bother except to push the rabble along. Here I would take a few photos of some animal life from a weird angle with my party. I would take a couple of shots of the sharks alone because they look SO cute when they are small. I also found it interesting that you can also see the lagoon from the top view later and if you're a kid can see it inside a bubble.
The next legs are pretty short, but some of them are interesting. The scorpion fish looked pretty cool.
The start of Jellyfish area is a great place to do a VIDEO op (because they change color). I also really liked the stages of the jellyfish once they reach their teenage to adulthood stage. It looked like the game Flow which was pretty awesome. The spotted jellyfishes were awesome to look at as well (though I thought I saw a dead one)
I woosed out on trying the electric eel thing, although the eel itself looked like it was sleeping.
I generally liked the LARGER aquatic life, especially the fish (and the lobster in the beginning). I also liked looking into the eyes of the hammer head shark, it was a fun experiment.
I also found the "Archimedes Screw" on display very interesting (since it was developed by my namesake). I had a quick photo op with this one. Just found it annoying to have to wait for the kids to stop hogging it.
Near the end just near the gift shop, you can see the lagoon from the top view. However don't go leave yet. There's a glass floor nearby where you can take pictures of your feet (similar to that of CN Tower).
In the gift shop is where you can find something that lives in a pineapple under the sea.
After leaving just try to find a seat with a strong wind to catch your breath. Because hordes of suicidal/homicidal people start lighting up their cigarettes and pot just outside the entrance. Fortunately, there's a wind tunnel effect around the seats were we sat down.
Would I go there again? Only with "well behaved" kids, because it will be entertaining to go with them there. Or to celebrate Rob Ford or some Mayor of Toronto passing a law to disallow street level smoking like they do in Davao. However, I won't do it as a date EVER in the future.
What would make this place better and make me want to go there again?
* An EXPENSIVE restaurant, preferably with glass flooring so you can see aquatic life. Also access to the restaurant guarantees you a separate line just like the CN Tower 360 restaurant.
* MORE ACTION! Not sure how they can do this, but in the end I was disappointed because there isn't much "drama". It's like driving a Subaru, you feel safe. If that's your thing, but it needs more excitement. The animals are quite docile so feels meh overal
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)