A rainy day - Sea Life Centre Manchester

With the weather predictions of rain for most of the country today, we decided that we would get out our Merlin Passes and head for something indoors. We had already been to the Sealife Centre in Blackpool and really enjoyed it so we thought we would try the Sealife in Manchester, and because we all love Lego in our house we would partner it up with a visit to the Lego Discovery Centre next door.

Before going the Husband and I had read and heard some not great reviews about both places, but we are pretty open minded and normally end up liking places others don't so thought we may as well give them a try.  Maybe if we had to pay out right to go to them we would have been put off by these reviews and not gone.  However, we are glad that we did.

We arrived at the Sealife Centre around 12 pm and queued up in the queue for annual pass holders and pre booked tickets.  The queue was not too long and we were in about 5 minutes later.  A queue then formed for photographs that most Merlin attractions do at the beginning and during the tour.  As we did not want a photograph taken, we politely said no and the staff had no problems with this.
After a wait of around 4 minutes we were ushered into a room called Turtle Bay where there was a short talk on Sea turtles.

After the talk we then entered into the main viewing areas. The initial part was crowed and queues to look into tanks formed, but as we began to walk further around these queues dispersed, and, although it was quite busy, it did not feel overcrowded or cramped.
There was an array of tanks offering information on different  under water creatures, and at times there were dive stations where children could answer questions and collect stamps - which at the end would result in a prize of a pop badge.

After viewing some of the large tanks and spending a considerable amount of time watching the Stingrays, we came across a small lego area where you could make a model sea creature or , like we did, create a small tile to complete a mosaic that Sealife Manchester are currently making.  There re also some large lego pieces in different tanks as currently there is a competition to find them all and at the end you receive a Lego Minifigure Diver - the Husband was very keen to do this and claimed the Minifigure for himself.

Unlike Blackpool Sealife centre, Manchester also provide a small indoor play area.  Titch enjoyed a 10 minute play in here to burn of a bit of energy.
There were also interactive games showing the skeleton of different sea life creatures that we had not experienced before.



Titch also enjoyed touching a star fish and fire shrimps. However, he was disappointed that there was no pop badge for this like there was in Blackpool.

In total we spent around 1.5 hours inside the Sea life Centre. Because we are Merlin Pass holders I can not say whether I felt like it was value for money. However, what I would say is that it is worth booking in advance online and if you are also interested in going to Lego Discovery too then I would purchase the Combi ticket.

If you and your children enjoy looking at Sea life and spend time reading the information, talking to staff, taking part in the challenges and listening to the talks you could easily spent a couple of hours here, and it is definitely worth the visit.