Blue Planet Aquarium 2018 Review
Reviewed by Kathryn Harrison
On Sunday afternoon my husband and I took our two daughters aged 5 and 1 to visit the Blue Planet Aquarium in Ellesmere Port. The aquarium is well signposted from the motorway and easy to get to, once you arrive there is a large car park with plenty of spaces. It’s worth noting that there is a £2.50 charge to park.
When you enter the attraction you go straight to the admission desks, you can buy tickets there or buy in advance online for a 10% discount. There is no fast pass entry if you buy online however when we arrived there were no queues.
There are 11 animal exhibitions including, Rock Pools, Flooded Forest, Caiman Crocodiles and our favourite Shark Tunnels. Our girls were very excited to see all the different fish, the tanks all had large viewing areas with information signs telling you about each species of fish. Unfortunately our girls are too young to read the information but they enjoyed moving from exhibit to exhibit.
Throughout the day there are various talks and feed shows you can watch. We only managed to catch one of these talks, the diver demonstration and ray feed in the aquatheatre. This is a large viewing window into the tank containing the sharks and big rays with lots of seating, we had a prime position on the upper level. The talk by Jordan was interesting and informative and we enjoyed learning about the individual sharks living at Blue Planet. After the aquatheatre you come straight to the Shark Tunnel, this is the star attraction at Blue Planet and gives you the chance to see the sharks, rays and other sea creatures swimming all around you.
The attraction website was advertising a Jurassic shark event running over the date of our visit however we didn’t see any signs of this at all when we were there.
We didn’t eat whilst at Blue Planet but we did go past the in house restaurant and saw lots of picnic benches near the outdoor play area. Throughout the exhibits I noticed there were a lot of rides and machines were you could get small gem stones and other such small toys. All of these incurred a cost of around £1 and seemed totally unrelated to the surrounding exhibitions. This could lead to unhappy children if you didn’t let them go on the rides etc or extra cost for parents if you did, thankfully my children weren’t too fussed by it and we managed to avoid any issues.
The website states the average visit to Blue Planet is 2-3 hour, we spent two hours there and whilst my daughter’s enjoyed looking at the exhibits they were beginning to get bored by the time we left. I don’t think we would rush to go back despite having a pleasant afternoon. The admission price is rather high when you consider how long you can expect to spend there and with all the extras, car parking, rides and toy machines, plus the gift shop the cost could easily spiral.
If you or your children have a particular interest in marine life then you will definitely enjoy Blue Planet however if you only have a passing interest I think there are other local attractions that provide better value for money and are more suited to young children.
Rating: 3/5
Tickets cost £19 (adults) / £13.50 (children) – book online to save 10%
For more information or to book online visit www.blueplanetaquarium.com.
Blue Planet Aquarium, Cheshire Oaks, Cheshire, CH65 9LF | 0151 357 8804
