So we joined the brand-spanking new Georgia Aquarium last Fall, and soon after the opening discovered that you need roughly 6.5 years of advance booking to attend on a weekend. Actually, it’s more like 3-4 weeks, but being new-ish parents we just didn’t have much luck planning that far ahead given our work schedules and the little guy. We did finally manage to visit last weekend, and managed to enjoy ourselves, taking photos along the way (gallery here). If you have an aversion to crowds, you may still want to hold off. The place does not handle the flow of visitors very well, with various eddies and tide pools of visitors bunching up and screwing up my photos enjoying the varying views of the marine habitats. I’m a huge fan of aqauriums, and when I heard the main tank here is one of the largest in the world, I expected to see something like the old New England Aquarium I fell in love with during college. There, a continuous ramp wrapped around their centerpiece, a huge tank. In the Georgia version, there are only a few smaller windows into the main tank plus a huge ‘theater-like’ main window some 61 feet wide and 23 feet tall. It’s very impressive – but with the huge crowds, the setup of several (five to be exact) ‘exhibit areas’ tends to have visitors clumping up and blocking the best views. Patience is a virtue here!

technorati tags: georgiaaquarium, photography, undersea