0xC9: Aquarium of the Pacific

Today, we packed up the family plus Uncle Gilbert and Grandma Sue and spent the day at the Aquarium of the Pacific. Karen and I had been there once before during a diner party thrown by Borland for BorCon 2001.

This trip was specifically for Benjamin. He loves fish. Whenever he comes over to me, if I'm on my laptop, he asks to see the fish screen-saver. So naturally, we would take him to the "Disneyland of aquariums" down in Long Beach. In fact, he most certainly enjoyed this trip more than any other trip to any attraction you could think of, including Disneyland.

The minute we walked in, he saw the first aquarium. So we unbuckled him from his stroller seat (yes, a five-year-old fits nicely into a stroller seat, where "nicely" is defined roughly as "extensively scrunched"):

To peal him away, I put him on my shoulders and stood there a bit. Then I ran away with him to the next aquarium. That worked nicely.

We eventually made our way to the seal and sea lion tank. That's one impressive tank. They actually had both seals and sea lions, but I didn't know which one was which. Hey, I'm just a software developer.

At first, Benjamin didn't notice the animals swimming around in the tank above. He was very interested in the curved "glass" itself.

You really can spend a good chunk of your day at this aquarium. I won't enumerate the kinds of fish there are. To someone like me, fish are fish. But Benjamin clearly liked the tropical fish the most. He didn't know what to do with himself when we got to that part of the aquarium. My previous trick, when it was time to leave, wasn't even working. He was very upset when we had to finally leave. But he was also tired from literally running back and forth and back and forth. What's a kid to do?

Was it because they are brightly colored? Probably. They use a UV light to ensure proper exposure to what they normally get in nature. In doing so, they show up very brilliantly.

Hannah really loved all the "Dory" fish and the "Nemo" fish. She would point them out every chance she got. She loved the big fake whales suspended from the sealing. I believe they were intended to be scale, but I'm not sure. She also had an incident with a tiny crab that came charging toward her. Her mother assured her that it couldn't get her, but you never know if these things scar kids for life or not.

We got there a little after noon and stayed until four. When we got into the van, Hannah immediately started snoring. Benjamin still wanted to see the screen-saver when we got home.