The tank is the whole day out. Here is what the ticket costs.
Which tunnels really have sharks passing overhead. Whether the combo pass beats two separate tickets. What time the feeding talk runs, and which cities keep their best tank open after dark. Reviews of the aquarium visits you can book, from Barcelona harbour to the Okinawa coast road.
Four tanks that carry a whole day on their own.
The ones people plan a trip around: a shark tunnel under a working harbour, a jellyfish wall behind a shopping mall, whale sharks four storeys deep, and sea lions on the Pacific. What each costs and what visitors said afterwards.
01The shark tunnelBarcelona Aquarium: Entry TicketEighty metres of acrylic on the Barcelona waterfront with sharks and rays overhead. Take the first slot of the day or one after four; the middle belongs to school groups.
02The whale sharksNaha: North Okinawa Sightseeing Tour & Churaumi AquariumUp the Okinawa coast to the Kuroshio Sea tank, where whale sharks and manta rays share four storeys of water. The tour absorbs the two-hour drive each way.
03The mall tankDubai: Aquarium and Underwater Zoo ExperienceTen million litres behind the shopfronts of a Dubai mall, with a walk-through tunnel and the underwater zoo above it. The timed slot is worth booking before you fly.
04The Pacific sideLA: Aquarium of the Pacific Skip-the-Line EntrySea lions, a lorikeet aviary and the cold-water galleries at Long Beach. On a weekend the skip-the-line entry earns its few extra dollars.
What an aquarium ticket actually costs, tank by tank.
Every visit on the site, grouped by price. A great deal of the world’s best glass costs less than a cinema ticket, and the ones that cost real money usually add a keeper, a feed or a dive.
City centre entry, the SEA LIFE network, and the municipal aquariums where a family walks in for the price of lunch.
- 1Barcelona Aquarium: Entry Ticketfrom $34
- 2Genoa: Aquarium of Genoa Entry Ticketfrom $35
- 3London: SEA LIFE Entry Ticketfrom $37
The flagship tanks and the combo passes: mall aquariums, whale-shark day tours and observation-deck bundles.
Private guiding, dive and sea-trek add-ons, and the long coach days that reach an aquarium two hours out of town.
The aquarium tickets more visitors buy than any others.
Browse every aquarium →These tanks take the crowds, and mostly they deserve them. What each visit costs, how long it holds a family, and what people say on the way out.
1
Barcelona Aquarium: Entry Ticket
Review of Barcelona Aquarium, with shark tunnel, Mediterranean habitats, family exhibits, ticket value, timing tips, and practical advice.
From · $34
Read our review →
2
Genoa: Aquarium of Genoa Entry Ticket
from $35
3
Dubai: Aquarium and Underwater Zoo Experience
from $56
4
Atlanta: Georgia Aquarium Skip-the-Box-Office Entry Ticket
from $64
5
London: SEA LIFE Entry Ticket
from $37
6
Mallorca: Palma Aquarium Entry Ticket w/ Optional 3D Cinema
from $36
7
London: Madame Tussauds, London Eye & SEA LIFE Combo Ticket
from $72
8
St Paul’s Bay: Malta National Aquarium Entry Ticket
from $20
Plain entry, combo pass, or straight past the box office.
Every aquarium ticket →
Almost every aquarium sells the same three things under different names, and the gap between them is rarely explained at the till. Entry gets you the tanks. A combo adds the tower, the wax museum or the theme park next door. Skip-the-line only matters where the queue is real.
Entry, and nothing you will not use
The basic ticket covers every tank, every talk and every feed on the schedule. At a mid-sized city aquarium that is a comfortable ninety minutes, and it is all most visitors ever need.
When the second attraction is next door
Combos work when the two sites share a building or a pier: an aquarium and an observation deck, an aquarium and a wax museum. They stop working the moment the second half is across town and you are tired.
Where paying more actually saves an hour
Queues at aquariums are weather-driven. A wet Saturday in half term puts an hour on the door of a city centre tank; a Tuesday morning in October puts none. Buy the upgrade for the first, not the second.
American aquariums come in three sizes. Pick one and give it the day.
A country with a coastline on three oceans built its aquariums to match: the huge civic tanks, the SEA LIFE centres in the shopping districts, and the theme-park marine parks. What each kind costs to get into.
Six countries where the aquarium is the reason to book the day.
A tunnel under a Catalan harbour, ten million litres behind a Gulf shopping mall, the SEA LIFE network spread across Britain and Germany, whale sharks off an Okinawa headland, and a reef aquarium a short drive from the reef itself.
In Dubai the aquarium is inside the shopping mall, and it is enormous.
A ten-million-litre tank sits behind plate glass on the ground floor of the Dubai Mall, with a tunnel through it, an underwater zoo on the level above and a penguin enclosure at the end. Abu Dhabi answered with a bigger one. Almost every ticket here bundles a tower, a waterpark or a transfer.
Japan treats an aquarium as architecture, and charges about $16.
Okinawa put whale sharks in a tank the size of a cinema and pointed the glass at the Pacific. Tokyo stacked one inside a skyscraper, another beside the Sumida river and a third in a Ginza art gallery. Entry is cheap, the queues are orderly, and the tanks are the point.
Every Japanese aquarium →
Cairns keeps the reef in a building, for the days the boat cannot sail.
The aquarium at Cairns holds only species from the Great Barrier Reef and the rainforest behind it, which makes it the one place you can name what you saw yesterday. In Sydney the tank sits on Darling Harbour and comes bundled with the tower and the zoo.
- 1SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium Entry Ticketfrom $31
- 2Melbourne: SEA LIFE Aquarium Entrance Ticketfrom $28
- 3SEA LIFE Sydney Aquarium Entrance Ticketfrom $31
Three things you cannot see through any other glass.
Every city has a tank with reef fish in it. Whale sharks cruising a four-storey window, a king penguin walking past your knees, and a shark tunnel opened up after five o’clock are not everywhere.
The Kuroshio Sea tank
The main window at Churaumi is over twenty metres wide and eight high, holding whale sharks and manta rays in seven and a half million litres. The building sits on a headland two hours north of Naha, so nearly everyone arrives on a coach or a bus tour rather than a train. Feeding runs on a posted schedule and the crowd in front of the glass triples for it.
- 1Naha: North Okinawa Sightseeing Tour & Churaumi Aquarium★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 472 reviews
- 2Okinawa HIP-HOP BUS B – 1 Course Tour (Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium)★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 66 reviews
- 3<1Dya Tour>Churaumi Aquarium, Cape Manzamo, American Village★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 20 reviews
Penguin encounters
The encounter tickets buy fifteen or twenty minutes on the keeper’s side of the barrier, usually at feeding time, usually with a bird that has decided to inspect your boots. Numbers are capped per session and the slots are sold separately from entry, which is why they disappear first in the school holidays.
- 1Dubai Mall Aquarium & Underwater Zoo with Penguin Cove Tickets★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 77 reviews
- 2Burj Khalifa, Dubai Aquarium & UWZ with Penguin Cove Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 63 reviews
- 3Dubai Aquarium & Underwater Zoo with Penguin Cove★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 40 reviews
Sharks after dark
Several of the big tunnel aquariums sell a late session that starts once the day ticket holders have gone. The lighting drops, the sharks get more active, and the moving walkway that was shoulder to shoulder at noon has room to stand still on. Some sites go further and put you in the water in a cage.
- 1Las Vegas: Shark Reef Aquarium Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 892 reviews
- 2Ripley’s Aquarium: Sharks After Dark Entry (After 5PM)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 401 reviews
- 3Porto Moniz: Diving with Sharks and Rays in Madeira Aquarium★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 192 reviews
Four aquarium tickets that will not wait until you land.
Most aquariums will sell you a ticket at the door on the day. These four run on capped time slots, coach departures or an after-hours session with a fixed number of places.
- 01Naha: North Okinawa Sightseeing Tour & Churaumi AquariumThe tank is two hours north of Naha and most visitors reach it on a coach that leaves the city once in the morning.
- 02Atlanta: Georgia Aquarium Skip-the-Box-Office Entry TicketEntry runs on timed slots with a cap on each one, and the box office queue in Atlanta is the thing the ticket exists to avoid.
- 03Burj Khalifa At the Top & Dubai Aquarium Combo Entrance TicketsThe tower half of the combo is sold by the half-hour and the sunset slots go weeks out, which fixes the aquarium half around it.
- 04Ripley’s Aquarium: Sharks After Dark Entry (After 5PM)The late session admits a fixed number after five and does not run every night of the week.
Rain fills an aquarium faster than sunshine empties a beach.
The aquarium is the whole city’s wet-weather plan, so a rainy Saturday in half term puts an hour on the door and a wall of pushchairs in front of the reef tank. Two answers: the first slot of the morning, or the last two hours before closing, when the school groups have gone and the keepers are doing the final feeds.
The add-ons that put you on the keeper’s side of the glass.
Feeding a turtle, standing in a penguin enclosure, walking the seabed in a helmet, sharing a tank with a reef shark. These are sold by the session with a hard cap on numbers, and they are the reason to check the calendar before the flights.
By country — where the tank is
Six European aquariums that make a route rather than a detour.
Genoa
London
Mallorca
Tenerife
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