As a fan of all of the "other" things to do in Vegas, I had somehow never made it to the Shark Reef Aquarium until this recent trip. It is $18 to get in, but I was lucky enough to get free tickets through the MyVegas game on the Facebook, so I have to say at the price of FREE it was a real value. For $18, I may not have felt it was quite the same value.
It is quite small. They have a little interactive map to look at and it gave me the impression it was bigger than it was, but even though it was small, it was really nicely done. The setting is tropical and we really liked it.... very disney-esque you could say.
They start out with some exhibits displaying reptiles and then they get to the meat of the undersea exhibits. They have a two-sided tank with sharks and other sea life and it even goes over your head and then at the end they have another larger one with more of the big guys and less of the little fish in it. IN between those is a ray petting tank when you can actually touch the sting rays (barbs removed, of course) and they have a really cool jellyfish tank. I so love jellyfish! They look so cool!
So, it's small, but they do have some interesting animals to look at... they even have some lionfish with a little info on how destructive these animals are to the ocean - but then they sell lionfish things in the gift shop which kind of glorifies them... That was strange, but I get that they look really cool. They just are really bad news.
Overall, we enjoyed it. I spent probably 30 minutes in there and took a TON of photos... because, hey, it's digital, so I can. But, if you've seen a lot of aquariums already or if you are an avid snorkeler/diver, this probably won't excite you so much.