Sassy Mama Field Trip: S.E.A. Aquarium at Resorts World Sentosa

Top tips for visiting S.E.A. Aquarium at Resorts World Sentosa

Determined to break our zoo-based Sunday routine, we decided to switch things up this week and head to the S.E.A. Aquarium at Resorts World Sentosa, billed as “The World’s Largest Oceanarium”. As it doesn’t open ’til 10am (and we’ve generally been up since dawn), we hit up Jones the Grocer for an early brunch beforehand with the littles. Arriving at RWS at 10.10am, we thought we were doing pretty well time-wise to beat the queues, but boy, were we wrong! We lined up for about 25 minutes to get our tickets, then joined the hordes of tourists pouring in to the venue.

The upstairs of the Aquarium is set up like a museum, with an exhibition based on various sea-faring nations that you have to walk through to get to the fish. Plodding along at a snail’s pace, frequently needing to ask someone wildly swinging their backpack about an inch from my baby’s face to be more careful, we were again questioning our choice of activity! Once we rode the escalator downstairs, things went from bad to worse when we saw they were making people line up yet again to get in, so we decided to upgrade our tickets to “priority queue” (ka-ching – another $20) in order to walk straight in. Some of the wonder of walking through the aquarium tunnels with fish swimming over and all around us was rather taken away by the fact that we were surrounded by literally hundreds of people all frantcially snapping away. Pushing ahead we finally managed to get in front of the tidal wave of folks, and from then on, we started being able to appreciate just how fantastic the Aquarium is. Sassy Mama Tip: If you’re heading to the S.E.A. Aquarium at the weekend, buy your ticket online and be ready to enter at 10am to beat the crowds!

There’s far too much to take in on just one visit (you can upgrade your day tickets to an annual pass when you exit), but some of the highlights for us were the sea jellies section, the moray eels and the enormous “Ocean Dome” where you can see manta rays and sharks swimming all around you. The various parts of the aquarium are themed by geographic location, and there’s lot of very well-written and interesting educational information next to each species in English and Chinese. There are plenty of little restaurants and cafes along the way too, and the whole thing (if you go at a pretty speedy pace) should take you about 45-60 minutes to go around. It’s all stroller friendly, and there’s a nursing and baby-change room just outside the exit to the aquarium.

One disappointment? None of the controversial (captured from the wild) dolphins are to be seen unfortunately — we’re not quite sure what has happened to them, but they weren’t in any of the tanks that we could see.

S.E.A. Aquarium, Resorts World Sentosa, 8 Sentosa Gateway, Singapore 098269
Tel: (+65) 6577 8888

Open 10am – 7pm daily. Ticket price for adults (Peak times) $29. Kids aged 4-12 years $20. Under 4 years old are free. Prices do not include Priority Queueing or Typhoon Theatre.

www.rwsentosa.com