Monday, July 13, 2009

GA Aquarium

In case you haven't been following my efforts on Twitter (cross-posted on Facebook), you might not know that today the family headed down to Atlanta (pretty near the headquarters of Adult Swim, if that means anything to you) for a trip to the Georgia Aquarium.

(Big time thanks to Lynda's parents for coming along, purchasing tickets, and generally helping corral the kids through the crowds.)

It was pretty nice, though--I have to admit--not as spectacular as I wanted it to be. (You can read more about the Aquarium here.) Don't get me wrong, it was pretty dog-gone cool and is a nice addition to the downtown tourist area. But I wanted it to be EVEN MORE cool. You got to walk through a tunnel with millions of gallons of water above you, fish of every type, size, and shape swimming above you. And yet, I wanted the tunnel to be longer. I wanted the crushing weight of the water to be higher.

I'm hard to satisfy, I suppose.

But I think the kids really enjoyed themselves. They oohed and aahed in all the right places. They were appreciative of the size of the whale sharks and manta rays and beluga whales. They enjoyed the touch pools. And the 4-D movie that fairly beat you over the head with environmentalism not seen since Disney's Pocahontas? Well, even I have to admit that the 3-D effects were very effective and the additional sensory layer of blowing soap bubbles, jets of unexpected air, and occasional mists of water made for an enjoyable movie. (But "Deepo" had better watch his back. Nemo's gonna sneak up on him and crack some dorsal fins pretty soon.)

In the end, we all survived a tourist outing. And even though lunch was shocking expensive and didn't offer lots of variety, we had a good time.

The most dastardly part of the entire aquatic affair was that we had to pass through the Gift Show to exit the complex. Truly an evil layout. (And I guess I shouldn't complain, as we didn't end up buy any stuffed animals on the way out. The kids must have either been tired or delirious from something.)

But I did manage to see this gem of a shirt on the way out.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I was curious about that aquarium; I'm a really big fan of the genre. I've been to: Chattanooga (surprisingly great, considering the garbage town it's in), Seattle (nice), Monteray (couldn't get Star Trek out of my head, but nice), and Chicago. I may make it to Newport, KY in a couple weeks when we go to Cincy.
Enjoy your vacation, David. You picked exactly the right week to be gone, in retrospect.

--Chris
http://christopherstewart.wordpress.com