Oceanarium, Bournemouth, BH2 5AA.
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When looking to visit Oceanarium, tickets can be purchased both online and at the attraction. Discounts are available when purchasing online.
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Ticket prices for pre-booking (these were correct as of the 13/04/2024):
Adult (16+) - £14.49
Child (3-15) - £9.99
Child under 3 – Free
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They also offer annual memberships starting from £24.99. When booking for just a one-off admission, they have family tickets available. A family of four ticket (maximum of 2 adults) is £35.99.
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Oceanarium is open to the public between 10am-6pm, however these can differ throughout the year so please check their website before visiting.
We spent just over an hour there. We easily could have spent at least another hour if we had lunch there.
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At Oceanarium there were a variety of animals/sea creatures including otters, penguins, sharks and many other sea creatures. There is also a small indoor play park. While walking around there is a tunnel style tank, an outdoor area to see the penguins at the top of the surface, a large shark tank and a gift shop.
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Our favourite area of the aquarium was the penguin area. We were able to get close and the penguins loved coming up to say hi. By the play area on the bottom floor, you can also see them swimming.
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There is plenty of parking available in a few hard surface pay and display carparks. Bath Road South was the closest, which includes disabled spaces, but there were no child spaces. Parking cost us around £9.90 for 3 hours. The car park (which has both stairs and a ramp) is next to the aquarium and took us around 2 minutes to walk to the main entrance door for the aquarium.
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While at Oceanarium, you can get food in their onsite café. Their prices were what you would expect from a cafe at an attraction. There was nowhere inside the attraction to have a packed lunch, however the beach is right next to the aquarium and there are several benches jotted around outside.
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When we visited this attraction, our boys were almost 3 years old and 17 months old. We found this day out to be enjoyable, no matter your age.
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There are two sets of toilets available which included accessibility toilets. There was also an additional changing facilities room by the penguin enclosure. We found the toilets clean and well stocked with toilet roll.
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To travel between the floors, there are both stairs and a lift available. The attraction is well spaced leaving enough room for a pushchair to pass through.
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Overall, we would visit again. When we saw staff, they seemed friendly and helpful. The aquarium was not the biggest and we found parking around the area quite expensive. Therefore, we have rated this day out 3 1/2 stars out of 5.
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Date of recent visit: March 2024
