A note from 2025,
This post is less a review of one of my favorite aquariums and more a look back at life as it was when California began easing the pandemic restrictions of 2020 or “What the hell, I didn’t ask to be in this movie, Pt 2”. I’ve stashed it in Trip Reports because, while it does have some lovely photos of the aquarium, its more about the trip and the times, than the place.
Time for a Vacation
Our plan for this “Late-in-the-Pandemic” trip was focused on ease and joy. We knew we wanted to go back to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and to also go whale watching but we didn’t wanted to be exhausted after or during the journey. In the past we’ve driven down at the crack of dawn to get on a 9 am boat, which means being on the dock by 8:30. With a 2+ hour drive, depending on traffic, that meant leaving between 6 and 6:30 am, which meant getting up before then, and only one of us is a morning person. With one exception, all of those previous outings were day trips. Which is doable, if you have someone who likes to drive, which Scott does, but it makes for a very long day. This time we applied our experience and changed the order of operations. We hit the Aquarium late morning on day one and saved 9 AM whale whatching for day two (you can read about that here), with lots of rest and down time between.
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Like most museums and zoo/aquariums in these covid19-related times the Monterey Bay Aquarium is doing timed ticketed entry, purchased in advance with limited paper/physical interaction for the tickets. We got tickets for the 10:30 am entry. When I purchased the tickets there were still around 150 available. Other times later in the day had 250 pretty consistently, so I assume 250 was the cap. This was either incorrect on my part because either 250 is way more people than I think it is or the cap was not maintained, because damn was the aquarium crowded even at 10:30.
See map online for more details
Looking at reviews and reports on line, it looks like the aquarium re-opened at 25% capacity with a lot of solid safety measures including three one way paths around the facility and no access to the high touch exhibits. That all seems to be gone now. I can’t find capacity information, but I’m guessing that when the mask mandates went away and all of CA got out of the “scary level” categories, the capacity limit went away along with all but the masks. Which, frankly, sucked. And with the staffing shortages (in literally every place we saw around town) there were fewer people to help maintain the few safety measures they still employed, and that included a lack of people to keep the masks on/in place once inside and away from the visibly well staffed front part of the aquarium.
All that being said, the aquarium is still amazing and gorgeous, and when the sun came out, it lit up the Kelp Forest tank in glorious ways. But the year plus of closure and loss of funding is showing. The Open Ocean exhibit looks old and kind of sad. The sea turtle(s) were nowhere in sight. And they have yet to replace their Mola mola, yet none of the signage was updated. The whole place looked oddly small. The otters were sleepy and awesome even in their sleepiness. At least one African penguin was molting and looked adorably grumpy. The bat rays where already kinda sick of humans at 11 am, but that’s pretty standard for them. The Jellies and the Wave-crash tunnel were as awesome as ever. We lucked out and got to watch a staffer feed the not-eel critter on the exterior side of the wave. That was cool!
The Cafe is fully open, as in ‘back to cafeteria, walk up and order’ style vs. what’s described on their website (place your order at a kiosk and then pick up). There’s not really any spacing for the tables, though with the main restaurant still closed, there is more room for more tables. That’s good, I guess, except when the place is packed.
Scott managed to score us a table against a side window that was in a nook, which cut down our exposure while eating, while giving us a nice view of the “Humpback Whale enclosure” from Star Trek IV / tide pool / ocean view spot. For those of you who aren’t Trekies, they famously shot part of the movie at the aquarium, renamed the Sausalito Cetacean Institute. It was just a MUNI ride over the bridge from SF! And had a tank large enough for two full grown Humpback whales. Link to a video comparing scenes from the film with locations at the Aquarium. And because I am that nerd, I took a photo of location of the outdoor “tank”.
Photo sequence of the Rocky shore / Tidal wave across the way from the dinning area. Every few minutes a waves crashes down from the top of the glass half dome, spreads down and into the open air pool at its exterior base. The water slowly drains down, clearing the view until the next wave crashes down.
The food is… cafeteria food at museum prices. As with every thing in the gift shop we kept reminding ourselves that paying those prices let us help feed the fishes. The gift shop was as crowded and ridiculously laid out as ever. Still it has lots of pretty stuff, and painfully expensive clothing. This year they are pushing stuff with “1984” written on it, the year the aquarium opened, with 80’s art styling and lettering. It’s as retro as you’d expect. Not bad, but hurts my Gen-X heart to be reminded of how long ago that was. lol. Mind you, I first visited the aquarium in 1987, so I AM that old 🙂 I even got to see the Star Trek IV exhibit with the life size neoprene heads of George and Gracie that they used to shoot Spock’s dip in the “tank” scene, and the glass mat painting of the SF skyline. If you looked closely you could see some of the boats had names like “Spock” that were re registered to Vulcan. And yes, I bought a hat with 1984 on it.
All in all, I’m glad I was able to go to the aquarium because I missed the hell out of the place, but the visit was seriously overshadowed by the crowds.
And yes, when they sent me a Thank you for Visiting! Email and asked me to fill out a survey, I did, and told them exactly what I thought.
After lunch and a stroll we headed back to our hotel to get ready for day two: Whale Watching! I know none of you will be surprised that this was the highlight of my vacation 🙂 Just the fact that we were getting on the water again after more than two years! Was music to my heart and soul. And what we got was one hell of a show! Link