On 4th April, we brought Baby L to the SEA Aquarium for the first time! His father loves aquariums and we were wondering what sort of reaction he would have xD. It was also the first time that we brought him out with his paternal grandparents.
We booked the tickets using our SRV vouchers. If you haven’t used them yet, take note that you can only use them in multiples of $10. So do calculate carefully if you plan to use the SRV vouchers for multiple attractions.
After booking the tickets on Klook, it does not guarantee entry to SEA Aquarium. You have to book entry slots to RWS here using your ticket number. However do make sure you select the correct date on your Klook ticket as well. Strangely on the day of the visit they looked only at my Klook ticket and weren’t really interested in my RWS reservation email.
The ticket on Klook comes with a free snack for each paid ticket. For adults, it would be a small box of 5 nuggets, redeemable at a snack store right at the opening of SEA aquarium, or at the Dino bites inside, next to their Ocean restaurant. Seniors get something else – a cake and a drink I believe, that can be redeemed at Malaysian food street. However the redemption is based strictly on the ticket you purchased. Eg if you bought 4 adult tickets, but went with 2 adults and 2 seniors, you will only be able to redeem 4 sets of nuggets.
April is also Baby L’s birthday month and we went to the guest services center located right outside SEA to redeem his birthday gift. It consisted of a cute magnet, a voucher for a free small bag of popcorn, and a discount voucher entitling the birthday person to 15% off retail or food items. You can redeem these free gifts any day during your birthday month, it doesn’t have to be on your birthday itself!
Being a Sunday, despite the restricted pax allowed, it was still extremely crowded inside. There were queue systems implemented for some areas, such as the dolphin viewing area, the jellyfish area and of course the giant Ocean Habitat area, which I would say is the key highlight of the whole place.
There are squares in front of each display marking out where visitors should stand in view of the safe management measures. Overall the queue management system was generally ok, since people usually don’t spend too long at one display anyway. The only area where I felt frustrated with the queue system was the one for the Ocean Habitat.
The queue for the Ocean Habitat involves visitors going down the staircase and a staff would assign you to go either the left or the right side. There is another queue there – when you are first assigned, you are assigned to the back area. There is a front area where you are directly infront of the aquarium and can admire the view. If you pushing a stroller or with a wheelchair user, the staff will ask at least one family member to queue while the other family member accompanies the one in the stroller/wheelchair. Only when your family member has been assigned a spot, the staff will allow you to take the lift down to meet up with your family. In other words, no cutting queue!
Up till this part was great. However, once you’ve been assigned a spot at the back end, whether or not you get a spot at the front end depends on how fast and lucky you are. The staff doesn’t interfere in assigning people to the front spots, and the family infront of us stayed there for more than 20 minutes! We gave up in the end and left.
Despite this unpleasant experience, generally we had a lot of fun at the place. Baby L looked around so much and refused to sleep until I forced him to in the carrier. Take note that being SEA aquarium, things are really expensive – a can of coke costs $4! And due to Covid, there is no water refilling service inside so make sure to bring your own hot water for making milk etc.
At the exit (after the shark exhibit), there may be mascots available for picture taking, but the staff would not help to take any pictures. Bring those selfie sticks because you’ll need it. Also, they have closed the section inside the Aquarium where you can touch the fishes, and shifted it outside. After exiting the Aquarium and passing by the souvenir shop, you’ll come to a small display of toads (really tiny toads in individual glass displays). After this area, there would be a snaking queue for the touch display. The two times we passed it, the queue was so long that we decided to give up straight away. If you really want to go this display, I suggest you conquer it as early as possible – we passed by at 12+ and again at 3+ and the queue was significantly longer at the later timing.
And that’s it! Baby L enjoyed his first trip to the aquarium but I think it would definitely be more fun for him when he could walk. Looking forward to bringing him again at a later age! Wonder if we will get SRV vouchers again? Heh heh. I hope this short post has prepared you for the trip to SEA Aquarium!
Bonus: you can get free parking at RWS if you spend $50 and above in selected restaurants. You can also dine at the Malaysian Food Street, in which case there is no limit to the number of receipts you can combine to form $50. The receipts can be from different stores too! You can redeem the receipts for the free parking coupon at a pop up booth next to the confectionary store at Malaysian Food Street. Or if you are very rich, you can dine at any of the other listed restaurants. No doubt you’ll hit $50 very quickly – one main at any of these restaurants is easily at least $30 – $40.
Pro tip: if you’re spending cash on the Klook ticket, you can get cashback from Shopback for any cash portion you are paying. Not on Shopback yet? Use my referral link here and we’ll both get $5 when you spend $20 and above!
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