Pics from Manila Ocean Park - not!
Our initial plan to enjoy and cap off this 3-day weekend was to go today to the newly-opened Manila Ocean Park behind the Quirino Grandstand in Luneta, Manila. What better way to relax and unwind, we thought, than to view the magnificent aquatic resources of the Philippines as displayed in this P1-billion oceaniarium.
But the Inquirer ran a story last week enumerating complaints of some visitors of Ocean Park. Apparently, around 3,000 people are visiting it everyday and the park simply cannot handle all of them. Visitors are supposedly queuing up for hours under the direct heat of the sun. The place is also said to have poor ventilation and some staff are allegedly discourteous.
Some visitors even felt short-changed with the P400 fee (P350 for children) because they couldn’t take good pictures due to many people blocking the displays and the feeling of being rushed to complete the visit.
Not very good. So we decided to just postpone our visit and reschedule it to a non-peak schedule.
Since I don’t have pics of Manila Ocean Park to share, for the meantime, I’ll just show pictures of a similar oceanarium we visited in South Korea last year. Although the COEX Aquarium in Seoul boasts of an efficient queuing system and good facilities, I don’t think they have a diverse collection of aquatic resources to offer. The range of fishes shown were just so-so but what I liked the most was the idea of being just a glass wall away from a dozen deadly sharks. Take a look at the pics below.
I look forward to visiting the Philippines’ Manila Ocean Park to see which of the two underwater displays offer a better experience.
How about you, have you been to the Manila Ocean Park? How was it?
Oceanarium Pics
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In living color
What’ya looking at?
Beware of the piranhas!
I use Colgate to have strong, healthy, and murderous teeth!
Two heads are better than one (two-headed turtle)
Tickle, tickle!
Eat me!
Sharks!
Shark???
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April 28th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
My best friend went there last month, qued for a couple of hours and stayed for 30 minutes. She got good pictures through her cellphone, but she advised me to wait another month or until the frenzy goes down before I take my 3 year old there.
April 25th, 2008 at 6:40 am
We went there last March and was dissappointed. The guards were discourteous, i was told by one staff that i can leave my things with the guard but the guard complained. I was telling them it will be uneasy for me to carry things around especially that i have a two year baby to attend to… One thing is that cameras are not allowed to be used with flash so we get blurred pictures inside the oceanarium which is not good to show to others. We went to Singapore Oceanarium and there we were allowed to take pictures with flash. I hope they will fix that problem so others will still have the enthusiasm to go and see Manila Ocean Park.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Thanks to your writeup I was thinking of going there… Oh well, I’ll just wait for their management to fix those quirks and handle the park more professionally :-)
April 8th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Yep, I heard similar complaints from DZMM teleradyo. Ted Failon was actually telling people to defer going the Manila Ocean Park… at least ’til the excitement dies down or that establishment hires professionals to handle the queueing system.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:03 am
I want to go there someday!