The aquarium at Moody Gardens has been under renovation for the past year and my family and I have been very anxious for it to reopen! It is set to reopen to the public on May 27th. So imagine my surprise when I received a members only email letting me know that I can visit from May 8th-24th for a "soft opening"! The email pointed out that there is still construction going on and not all new attractions are open, but this was exclusively for members for being so patient during the renovations. Woohoo!!
I was there on May 8th at 10am! I wanted to get great pics and videos for y'all and planned on going live so you could experience all the new exhibits with me! Thinking since only members were allowed in, this should be easy! Not so much. There were at least 10 school field trips there and the place was total chaos. (More on this later). I was able to get some pics and made at least one lap so I could see the changes! Here is what you can look forward to:
A new aquarium that runs from top to bottom! The kids noticed this first!Then there are two new touch tanks! Here is a photo of one of them below. The other one looks very similar. They will house sting rays and other marine life!
There is a small climbing structure resembling trees and vines behind one of the touch tanks. The kids really seemed to enjoy this!
Everyone loved the new penguins! They were super cute and very active! They were certainly fun to watch!
There is also a new pirate ship inside the walk through tanks with the sharks. I didn't get a good picture of it, but it looks really cool!
I know they are working on a jellyfish exhibit as well, which was not open yet when I was there. There was actually still a lot of construction going on, so I can't wait to see it all finished! There were new floors too! Much better than the carpet that was there before! I'm so anxious for the final reveal!
What discouraged me a bit was the miscommunication on the soft opening! A fellow mama I was with was able to find an employee to give us an explanation. Apparently, the soft opening is not for members, but for school groups. Since it would be open, they decided to just go ahead and let members come as well. This was not communicated in the email. If it was, I would have simply came later when the school groups have left for the day. I'm happy the school groups get to come and the kids get to experience the new aquarium!! :-) So just keep in mind if you are member, that mornings are simply too chaotic to really get a good look at everything. I apologize for the long explanation of why I only have pics for you and no videos, but I think it needed explained in more detail.
All in all, I'm very happy with the changes so far in the aquarium and can't wait to see it fully completed! Only one week to go!! It will be awesome to get out of the heat and humidity of the summer to hang with some penguins and stingrays. Kudos Moody Gardens!
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