Today we visited the Shedd aquarium after our brief visit to the Field museum. We have been to the Shedd aquarium before, but this time we saw some new things, including the shark tank, and the whale and dolphin show. We had a great time!
As with all Aquariums, I found it to be ridiculously expensive. Not only that, but very confusing. You can get a base ticket for $15, but that only gets you into the tanks. To see the big animals, like the otters, penguins, whales, and dolphins - you need to pay almost double that. If you want to go to the whale and dolphin show, you have to add another $4. If you want to see the jellyfish you add another chunk of change. It adds up real quick if you have kiddos. There is supposedly a CityPass you can get, which gets you into a bunch of places over the course of a few days. If I didn't have my other passes that get me in free, I might explore it. Otherwise, the entire time we are in Chicago exploring places - it is all free. Except for the expensive aquarium.
The show was really nice. Joel Andrew was a little overwhelmed after our Field experience, so it was good that we ran into the Aquarium and sat down right away to watch the "whale" and dolphin show. They were beluga whales, people - not Shamu. Anyway, the show was nice and held Joel's attention, which really spoke to how much he needed a rest, because it was mostly an educational show. Of how they train the animals. At the end of the 1/2 hour they had 2 minutes of the dolphins jumping. Looking around at all the school kids in the crowd I could hear 250-300 voices in my head: "when are they going to jump? Why is this guy talking so much?" The dolphins jumping were awesome, and even got some applause from Joel Andrew. This is huge as the kid always yells at me, or anyone around him, for clapping. Not sure why he doesn't like clapping...
We went onto the other exhibits, and as with any other aquarium we have been to (I am referring to New England as I can't remember if we have been to any others), school groups mobbed the place. We did get to go around though and wait our turn and get back to the kids place space. Joel Andrew had a few glorious minutes in the submarine, pushing buttons to his heart's content. The slide area was overrun with school kids and after I yelled at other people's children for running on it and almost mowing my child down, we decided to move on. Normally I will never yell at somebody else's child, but I couldn't help it in this instance...
We then went to the touch tank, and touched a starfish! My little timid man washed his hands and stuck them right in, petting the starfish nicely twice. I was so impressed! Then, we went to wash and dry his hands, and he freaked out at the force of the hand dryer... Go figure...
The shark area was awesome, and we got to see Dory up close, stand over a sting ray tank, and watch a wave come in and out of another tank. But all the kiddo wanted to do was sort through the iPad-like things that told you what each fish was. He would not even look at the tank, just played with the iPads. Grumpy and I figured next time we can just get him an app... No, we all had a great time and it was good to get out!
Time flew, but lunch was around the corner and we booked it out of there (cafeteria with school groups just might push us over the edge) and we went to the Park Grille, which is right below the "Bean." Joel Andrew played on the iPhone and Grumpy and Mommy enjoyed a nice lunch. Good times were had by all! What will we do tomorrow?
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