Georgia Aquarium ROX!

Mitch turned 5 this week, and he just does not do well with parties. With his sensory, social, and behavioral issues, he usually just becomes a little overstimulated and overwhelmed. Because of that, we decided to just do a little family outing for him. Since we had not had a chance to go to the new Georgia Aquarium, we figured we'd head up there for the day. We started by giving him his presents from everyone which have had a decidely Crocodile Hunter theme to them - that is his current kick he's on. He got various crocodiles, snakes, and spiders, as well as two Steve action figures. Needless to say they were quite a hit.

We headed on up and met my sister Paige at her work with her two kids. Her office is only two blocks from the Olympic Centennial Park and the Aquarium. We had lunch there and let the kids play on the playground for a while before heading over. We were prepared for crowds, but oh my gosh it was bumper to bumper butts! LOL It was quite tight in a few spots, but we did manage to get through and see everything except for the octopus (sorry Adam...LOL) - the line there was WAY too long and WAY too hot.

But other than that, this place is AMAZING! The habitats were EXTREMELY HUGE and filled with multitudes of species (unlike most aquariums I have been to where each species has is own little tank. The other cool thing was that many of the habitats actually went ABOVE you, so you were looking into the tanks from the underside, which allowed you to see many species of fish - bottom feeders - that you normally don't get good looks at in other aquariums. The oceanic display was freaking MONSTROUS! When you first went into it, you had a few windows looking into the tank where you could see literally thousands of fish of all kinds. The tank was so big that you actually saw 4 or 5 separate schools of fish of the SAME species swimming around in there. All of a sudden we walked up to a tunnel with a conveyer belt. You just stepped on and it carried you slowly through a tunnel THROUGH the oceanic display! Oh, did I mention the tank is so big that they have TWO whale sharks in it, and they were swimming over our heads along with many other species? Yeah, it was cool. Then it led us to a display window into the tank that was almost twice as big as a theater screen! We just sat there mesmerized by the life display playing out before us.... We ended with a huge coral reef display that recalled thoughts of the "Dropoff" from Finding Nemo. It was just so fantastic!

I could go on forever about the place, but I will just let you look at some of the pics in the Flickr badge in the side bar to the right...