My wife and I, with baby Sophie (9 months), visited the Atlanta aquarium (“Georgia Aquarium”) Tuesday May 17 (A.D. 2011) from about 1:30pm to about 5pm. Last year we had a family membership to the Chattanooga aquarium (“Tennessee Aquarium”) and visited it several times. How do they compare? Bottom line here at the top: both are worth seeing; both have special points. Allow about 4 hours, or more, for each.
PRICE
Chattanooga family membership, $115. One adult ticket, $25 or so. Two adults, $85 membership (unlimited visits for a year). Plus tax, near 10% in Tennessee.
Atlanta, we paid $83.06 or so to get in, which included tax and the dolphin show. Membership for one adult is about twice the single-admission price. Memberships cheaper for seniors ($58 or so) and for children ($45 or so). No family memberships.
Parking, Atlanta, $7 across the street or $10 official Aquarium parking. Chattanooga, similar prices, maybe a little less–also park and ride the free downtown shuttle buses–and you MIGHT find a parking place on the street, some of which are free after 4:30pm and on weekends.
Advantage Chattanooga, but an Atlanta membership would save money on the 3rd and later visits. (I wish both websites would list the prices and then say “Do you want to buy?” instead of asking if you want to buy and then telling you the cost.)
Atlanta website: http://www.georgiaaquarium.org/
Chattanooga website http://www.tnaqua.org
Yelp! Reviews for Atlanta: http://www.yelp.com/biz/georgia-aquarium-atlanta
Yelp! Reviews for Chattanooga: http://www.yelp.com/biz/tennessee-aquarium-chattanooga
(I suppose Yelp! Is a trademark. It offers users’Ëœ comments on all kinds of things.)
GENERAL LAYOUT
Chattanooga takes you to the top of each building and then down through it–a smooth flow. (Detour to the basement to see the jellyfish.) Atlanta has a central food court: choose your own side trips: dolphins, cold water, rivers, Georgia coast, reefs, big saltwater tank (whale sharks and manta rays), “Deepo” (think Nemo?–it seemed aimed at children; we skipped it).
Advantage Chattanooga–smooth flow–unless, maybe, you have a special interest in one feature.
SPECTACULARS
Atlanta’s “Dolphin tales”–the fairy tale the show tells will not displace J. R. R. Tolkien, nor even Dr. Seuss, among fantasy productions, but the dolphins’ stunts by themselves and with people kept even baby Sophie’s attention. Mostly she watched people instead of fish, but she did watch the dolphin show. We sat in the fourth row and got very lightly misted (from the artificial rain, not from dolphins splashing); it worked just fine for us. No one sat in front of us, but the seats seemed as dry as we did after the show. The show tank has a glass wall facing the audience. One dolphin swam upside down just under the surface near this wall. The show also featured dolphins walking on their tails, somersaulting, and jumping in formation (two or five at once). People used dolphins as speedboats: letting dolphin noses push them through the water by their feet –fast!–and, once, straight up out of the water–the dolphin pushed the lady several feet into the air. Also, once, a lady rode with a foot on each of two dolphins, with a handle in one dolphin’s mouth connected by a cord to a handle in her hand.
Another tank displayed two dolphins, and we had a pleasant chat with an aquarium worker about the dolphins.
The world’s biggest aquarium tank, 6.3 million gallons (three quarters of the aquarium’s water), holds whale sharks 20-30 feet long, and manta rays; as I was walking through the tunnel under the tank (Atlanta features a LOT of looking UP into tanks; Chattanooga mostly has side windows from which you can often see up and down) I saw a line of three rays, each big enough to cover a picnic table, swim by overhead . Oh yeah, there were hammerheads and other sharks bigger than me — and I hardly paid attention to all the lesser creatures in this tank.
The belugas (white whales, like big fattish white dolphins) in “Coldwater quest” liked to rub their backs on the glass, so we could see their blubber flattening out. One of them liked to play with a plastic disc about a foot across that had holes of various shapes in it–liked to swim around with this disc on his forehead. (The lady talking and taking questions about the belugas said they don’t call this and similar objects “toys” because they don’t know what the belugas are thinking.) On a brief return visit we saw the harbor seals swimming with the belugas.
Both aquariums have penguins. Chattanooga has two or three species, in a smaller (?) exhibit. Atlanta’s African penguins seemed more active, and more inclined to clown around for their human audience, than Chattanooga’s; and again we had a nice chat with a worker. (He said he thinks the harbor seals were put in for the belugas to play with.)
Coral and fish at the reef offered lots of bright colors.
The first exhibit that really jumped out at me was the electric eels–three black eels thicker than my arm and about twice a long in a tank that looked maybe 5x6x8 feet. What we’d seen before them were more ordinary fish: worth a look, but not instantly spectacular. The eels’ eyes (?) looked like the stud part of a snap on one of Sophie’s outfits. The back wall of their tank was light blue —
Which was great for letting us see the eels, but somewhat less great as a model of where they ordinarily live. My overall impression is that Chattanooga’s displays try to look like where the creatures live, and Atlanta’s displays try to help you see the creatures. Chattanooga’s logs and rocks may be cement and plastic, but there’s more emphasis on habitat (and you can still see the creatures.) Atlanta doesn’t try quite as hard (is my overall impression) to show habitat. Of course, Atlanta is way ahead of older aquariums that put fish in a plain tank with white walls. And of course, both aquariums have to keep their water much clearer, I’m sure, than wild water usually is.
Chattanooga has a couple big blue macaws, and a butterfly room (see if they land on you), and a better jellyfish exhibit than Atlanta, and a better view (the bank of the Tennessee River instead of the middle of a city), and a better river exhibit (from Appalachian streams, through the Tennessee River, down to the Mississippi delta. This exhibit is the main feature of the Tennessee aquarium). Big catfish and sturgeons.
Both have otters: Atlanta has active noisy little Asian otters (big cat size), and sea otters (Labrador dog size); Chattanooga has US river otters (a bit smaller than the sea otters). Fun to watch when swimming. Asian otters maybe the best bet. (I’ve seen Chattanooga’s otters swimming, and I’ve seen them sleeping.)
Both have petting tanks. Chattanooga offers rays, sturgeons, and sharks. (The sharks usually hide under a bridge.) Atlanta may not offer sturgeons, but it does offer starfish and sea urchins.
Overall spectacular: advantage Atlanta, though each has its strong points–each offers things the other does not.
CROWDS
We visited Atlanta Tuesday afternoon during a school day. It didn’t seem crowded. Maybe half the seats were full for the dolphin show. We bought tickets at the door with no waiting. Sunday afternoon was perhaps the most common time for our family to visit the Chattanooga aquarium. It didn’t usually seem crowded, or at least the crowds moved smoothly. Atlanta’s crowd perhaps included more foreign-looking people than Chattanooga’s (that’s an observation, not a complaint; the crowds in Heaven will feature every race.) My wife heard some young Hispanic men seeing Sophie’s smile and saying, Maybe she likes Columbians 🙂
FOOD
Atlanta has, I think, one restaurant inside the aquarium, and maybe two or a few nearby; we didn’t really look. (We’d eaten just before we came and we made another stop before supper.) Chattanooga has vendors and restaurants both in the aquarium plaza and in the next few blocks. Advantage Chattanooga, at least for somewhat upscale dining (TGI Friday’s, etc.) Panera Bread, 4 blocks, or Krystal and Subway just across the river, for the working class. (I’m a missionary kid and earn $8.50/hr; I’m happy at McDonald’s.)
Chattanooga’s signs (on each tank) tend to offer more information than Atlanta’s, and Chattanooga may have more workers around to supervise petting tanks, talk about the creatures, make sure no exotic butterflies escape the butterfly room, and so on. Atlanta’s signs offered phone numbers for more info on each exhibit; I don’t remember whether Chattanooga offered a similar feature. My wife’s overall impression was that Chattanooga paid rather more attention to education, Atlanta to entertainment. As noted above, I think Chattanooga makes a more thorough effort to present habitat.
TIME
Time it takes to see aquariums: We got into the Atlanta aquarium around 1:30 pm Tuesday 17 May A.D. 2011 (had to buy tickets, but there was no line waiting for this). We looked around the Georgia coast exhibit, the rivers exhibit, the beluga exhibit and the penguins, the reef exhibit, and briefly the huge exhibit; then we went to the 4pm dolphin show. (There’s an 11am show, and they may add a 3rd daily show; the dolphins are fairly new there.) After the show we watched dolphins in the 2nd tank and chatted with a worker, than went back to the big exhibit, and were done by 5pm when the aquarium was closing. We skipped the “Deepo” show–it seemed geared to young children, and ours were elsewhere; we didn’t watch the movie about whales off the Georgia coast, and my wife heard of some other movie, upstairs, that we also missed. Give yourself close to 4 hours on a good day; maybe more if facing big crowds (weekend, summer, whatever) or if wanting to observe more closely. Chattanooga, about the same: 2 hours or so for the river building, a bit less for the ocean building, and some time for the jellyfish (or other special exhibit, if the jellyfish go.) Gift shops extra.
