Ad disclosure: We were given free entry to the SEA LIFE Birmingham in order to review the new Sea Stars attraction.
A week or so ago, we were invited to come along and check out the new Sea Stars attraction at The National SEA LIFE Centre Birmingham, which is home to a wide variety of starfish species. I’ve been completely buried in a world of DIY since then (post with the results of that soon!) so I haven’t had energy to open my laptop until now.
As always, the girls were excited as soon as they realised where we were going, and completely fascinated by everything they saw whilst there. They absolutely love the Sea Life Centre, and will spend hours watching the fish – especially the penguins, which they adore! We spent a long time at the Bay of Rays this visit as well, sitting on the side and watching the large sea creatures swim around.
The Sea Stars exhibition is about half way around the attraction, taking the place of most of the old jellyfish area which had definitely seen better days! There are still a small amount of jellyfish after the starfish, so don’t fret if you’re a jellyfish fan – you’ll still get to see some at SEA LIFE Birmingham.
The new attraction has a huge range of starfish, and the children really enjoyed looking at all of the different types. The pop up bubbles and peek a boo holes were a brilliant way to get closer to the star fish and look at them from all angles – the kids really loved the pop up bubbles in particular.
I found the star fish fascinating; I had no idea there were so many different types – around 1,500 species over all our oceans, apparently! At SEA LIFE Birmingham they have the Brittle Star, Chocolate Knobbed, Common Starfish, Red Knobbed and Sun-Star – just to name a few. The huge ones were simply amazing.
The light up displays at the SEA LIFE Birmingham make it easy to read more about all the different species – even in the low light levels of the centre you can learn so much as you wander around. We prefer to positively dawdle around the place, soaking in all there is to see and enjoy.
As well as all the normal fun, until 19th April young visitors can take part in SPONGEBOB’S SPONGEHUNT while visiting SEA LIFE Birmingham. To celebrate the release of The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, they have hidden a number of Spongebob characters in the tanks for children to find.
Each tank hiding a character is marked with a SpongeBob glasses sticker, and inside are small models of the characters. Each child got a sheet and some stickers to mark when they had found each character – and even though Georgie and Lydia aren’t huge SpongeBob fans, they loved the hunt!
As always, we really enjoyed our time at SEA LIFE Birmingham, and wished we could have stayed longer than the 3 hours we did – drat the children’s busy social life, with parties to attend! The 360 degree Ocean Tunnel was magical, and the second view of the penguins on the way out was much enjoyed by all of us.
Looking forward to our next visit already!
I wanna go!! This looks like a great day out, I love a Sealife Centre x
You can’t beat a Sea Life Centre for a good family day out. We have one near us and the children adore it. Thanks for linking up with #TriedTested