Pics from Manila Ocean Park - not!
April 7, 2008
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?
