Attractions & Tours
America's Best Aquariums
Tours, attractions, and experiences across America — booking direct where we can, vetted affiliate partners where we can't.
28 attractions
West Coast
Aquarium West Coast
8 listings
Monterey Bay Aquarium
America's #1, and it isn't close — the aquarium that invented the living kelp forest, raised the bar for every institution after it, and still runs the country's best single exhibit lineup: otters, open-ocean tuna, and deep-sea aliens.
Aquarium of the Pacific
Long Beach's Pacific portal — Southern California's biggest aquarium, organized ocean-by-ocean from sea otters to coral lagoons, with the stunning Pacific Visions wing, lorikeet feedings, and whale-watch boats at the dock outside.
Seattle Aquarium & Ocean Pavilion
The Pacific Northwest's window — Puget Sound's octopus and otters on the working waterfront, now joined by the Ocean Pavilion: a 2024 expansion whose one-way reef hall and 500,000-gallon archway reset the city's skyline-to-sea walk.
Oregon Coast Aquarium
The Pacific Northwest's coastal showpiece on Yaquina Bay — sea otters, seals and sea lions in outdoor rocky pools, one of the continent's great seabird aviaries, and underwater tunnels through Oregon waters.
Cabrillo Marine Aquarium
Los Angeles's free aquarium at Cabrillo Beach — a Frank Gehry-designed campus devoted to Southern California sea life, with touch pools, a jelly lab and tidepools a short walk away.
Hatfield Marine Science Center Visitor Center
Oregon State's working marine lab opens its doors for a small fee — a giant Pacific octopus, tidepool touch tanks and a tsunami wave tank, next door to the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport.
Bonneville Fish Hatchery and Sturgeon Center
Free, in the Columbia River Gorge — meet Herman, a 10-foot white sturgeon about 90 years old, through an underwater window, then feed rainbow trout and watch salmon return in the fall.
Haystack Rock Tidepools, Cannon Beach
The Oregon coast's living aquarium with no walls — sea stars, anemones and nudibranchs at low tide beneath a 235-foot sea stack, and tufted puffins nesting overhead in early summer.
Southeast
Aquarium Southeast
6 listings
Georgia Aquarium
The biggest in America — ten million gallons in downtown Atlanta, and the only place outside Asia to swim beneath whale sharks: four of them, cruising a football-field tank past a 61-foot viewing window and a 100-foot tunnel.
Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies
The mountain-town overachiever — a top-five-ranked aquarium improbably parked in Gatlinburg, with the continent's longest underwater tunnel gliding beneath sand tigers, a penguin crawl-through, and value the coastal giants can't touch.
Tennessee Aquarium
The world's best freshwater aquarium — Chattanooga's twin glass peaks follow a raindrop from Appalachian stream to Gulf reef, with river otters, the giant catfish flathead hall, and an Ocean Journey wing of sharks and butterflies.
South Carolina Aquarium
Charleston's harbor-front aquarium follows a raindrop from the mountains to the sea — ending at a 385,000-gallon Great Ocean Tank, and with a working sea turtle hospital on the ground floor.
Ripley's Aquarium of Myrtle Beach
The Grand Strand's rainy-day rescue — sharks overhead in the Dangerous Reef tunnel, a ray touch pool, a penguin habitat, and more than 10,000 animals at Broadway at the Beach.
UGA Marine Education Center and Aquarium
A small, low-cost university aquarium on Skidaway Island near Savannah — loggerhead sea turtles, Georgia coast fish and a touch tank, then a nature trail through maritime forest and salt marsh.
East Coast
Aquarium East Coast
6 listings
National Aquarium
Baltimore's glass-pyramid icon — the Inner Harbor landmark that ascends through a dripping tropical rainforest to ring-shaped shark and ray tanks, with an Australian river gorge, dolphins, and the best one-way flow design in the field.
New York Aquarium
The city's aquarium on the Coney Island boardwalk — founded in 1896, rebuilt after Hurricane Sandy around Ocean Wonders: Sharks!, with sea otters, sea lions and penguins on the open-air Sea Cliffs and the Atlantic a few steps away.
Sant Ocean Hall, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
The best free ocean experience in America — a full-size North Atlantic right whale overhead, a giant squid, megalodon jaws and a living coral reef tank, on the National Mall with no ticket required.
New England Aquarium
Boston's spiral around a four-story ocean — the brutalist harbor classic where a ramp corkscrews up the 200,000-gallon Giant Ocean Tank past its coral reef and celebrity sea turtle, with penguins filling the ground floor below.
Mystic Aquarium
New England's beluga home — one of the only U.S. aquariums keeping the white whales, in outdoor habitats you can watch for free-range hours, plus African penguins, seals, rays, and the storybook seaport town around it.
Adventure Aquarium
Philadelphia's aquarium, across the river in Camden — a shark bridge strung over the Northeast's biggest shark collection, a walk-through shark tunnel, penguins, and a pair of Nile hippos you can watch from underwater.
Gulf Coast
Aquarium Gulf Coast
4 listings
Audubon Aquarium of the Americas
New Orleans' riverfront revival — rebuilt in 2023 with the Insectarium under one roof, keeping the Gulf rig's sharks, the Amazon's piranhas, the white alligator's swamp, and Mississippi views from the French Quarter's edge.
Texas State Aquarium
The Gulf's Texas-sized teller — Corpus Christi's bayfront anchor with the Caribbean Journey wing's shark-filled sea and cenote, dolphin presentations, a working wildlife-rescue hospital, and the USS Lexington floating next door.
The Florida Aquarium
Tampa's wetlands-to-reef storyteller — follow Florida's water from mangrove roots and wading birds under the glass dome to the coral reef's sharks, with a working coral-rescue lab, wild dolphin bay cruises, and Sparkman Wharf next door.
Clearwater Marine Aquarium
The rescue aquarium made famous by Winter the dolphin — rehabilitated dolphins, sea turtles, otters and manatee care on the Clearwater waterfront, now with a new open-air sea lion and seal deck.
Midwest
Aquarium Midwest
3 listings
Shedd Aquarium
The grand old master — Chicago's 1930 Beaux-Arts temple on the lakefront, where belugas and dolphins perform against skyline windows, a Caribbean reef spins in the marble rotunda, and the architecture is half the ticket.
Newport Aquarium
Cincinnati's aquarium across the Ohio River — walk the 75-foot Shark Bridge over a 385,000-gallon shark tank, touch a shark, and finish with Penguin Palooza on the Newport levee.
Belle Isle Aquarium
A free 1904 aquarium by Albert Kahn under a vaulted ceiling of green opaline glass tiles — billed as the oldest aquarium in the country, with a world-class collection of air-breathing fish and every North American gar.
Southwest
Aquarium Southwest
1 listing
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