SEA LIFE London Aquarium

We are a family who has travelled to most major cities and been to any aquarium or water attraction we come across and so thought we should take in this one for comparison. It was awful! You are underground the entire time, dark dingy crowded halls that wind around and then just when your claustrophobia has hit its peak and you are looking for the light at the end, you have to turn around and double back to get out. The displays were mediocre at best. It is definitely NOT worth the ticket price and is in our opinion is a must-avoid when going to London. Better takes? Don't miss the Churchill war museum and Imperial War Museum across the river. Both are among the best museums we have ever been to. And for the kids the natural history museum was a hit - you can easily spend a whole day there.

Admittedly we made a bit of a mistake taking our kids to the aquarium during half-term, but even if it had been less manic, the experience would still have been disappointing.

Queuing was a farce from the start. There were 2 separate queues, but it wasn't until you were already in one, and a fair way along that it said one was a fast-track queue for those who had bought online tickets, annual passholders, and groups. We should have been in the fast-track queue as we had merlin annual passes, but got in the other queue which was actually faster! I was quite glad not to be in the fast-track queue as a row about queue jumping broke out which was pretty unpleasant given that there were lots of children about.

On the plus side, there are a lot of fish, and some pretty big ones inlcuding sharks which the children love. On the down side, there seems to be a lot of wasted space (could there be more interactive displays or hands-on?). The only real info-panels I saw were dedicated to pollution in the Thames (apart from a couple on sharks).

If you have non-school age children, go during term-time when it's not so busy, and you can spend a bit more time looking in the tanks. Otherwise, the smaller children get bundled to one side by bigger children.