Visiting Clearwater Marine Aquarium

I was give complimentary tickets to visit Clearwater Marine Aquarium. All opinions are my own.

During the #SSLBloggerRoadTrip we decided to take the opportunity to visit the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. I have seen both of the Dolphin Tale movies so I was very excited to visit the star of the movies – Winter. Having arranged to get tickets before hand we simply walked to the ticket window and picked up our passes which also included admission to the secondary location where props and movie sets are displayed.

Walking up to the aquarium I was pretty excited because it looked just like the movie. The houseboat from the movie is even docked out front.
When you first walk into the aquarium you are in the gift shop. We decided to first walk through the animal hospital part of the aquarium. Here there is a hallway filled with windows so you can see any of the animals the staff are currently working on. There wasn’t much going on during our visit, though there was a sea turtle being cared for. It was a really neat facility and I bet very exciting to visit when there are animals being worked on.

Calling the Clearwater Marine Aquarium an aquarium is a little stretch of the word. I would definitely call it a marine rehabilitation center. If you have visions of tanks of different kinds of fish and sea life, you will be disappointed. You will see dolphins, turtles, a pelican, sea otters, tons of string rays you can touch and watch be fed and a few fish. There is a lot of learning to take place at the aquarium. Education is very important to the aquarium because there are a lot of different ways to learn there.

• Learn through play in the play room which also features skeletons from different marine animals.
• Reading – there are a ton of plaques throughout the aquarium.
• Presentations – we were able to listen to a presentation about sea turtles as well as watch them get fed. We also saw part of the sting ray feeding and presentation. There are plenty of opportunities to pet a sting ray. We also heard some of a presentation about Winter and Hope.
• Visiting the animal hospital, reading the signs and watching what they are doing.

After walking through the hospital section we went upstairs where Winter and Hope are. There are also several sea turtles. We got there in time to hear all about the sea turtles and watch them being fed.

After hanging out with the turtles we moved down to watch Winter and Hope swim around. It was so exciting to see them in real life. There were some lucky kids that were able to get down by the pool and take pictures with the dolphins. We just watched from afar.

We wandered around, touched the sting rays, saw the few fish there were to see and just enjoyed out time. It was really interesting walking through the play room seeing the skeletons and other things on display.

We had such a fun time visiting the aquarium. My suggestions for visiting would be to plan about 2-3 hours for the aquarium. We took their boat to the secondary location that had the props and then rode the trolley back to our car. I would only recommend the second location if you are big fans of the movies. If you are an animal lover or big into dolphins paying for the extra things like getting your picture taken or swimming with the dolphins is probably worth it.

Have you been to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium? I’d love to hear about your visit!