On Saturday we had a very exciting morning… we were guests at the press day at Sea Life Centre Birmingham, for the opening of their new Penguin Ice Adventure exhibit.
A colony of 12 Gentoo penguins have moved into the brand new Antartic-themed enclosure, and have plenty of space to play and swim. The 70,000 litre pool has several different viewpoints, so that visitors can see the penguins above land and underwater. My favourite viewpoints were those where the water level was actually halfway up the glass, where I could see the penguins breaking the surface of the water right in front of me – I just found their motion in the water so graceful and fascinating.
Georgie and Lydia truly loved the experience of watching, and indeed, playing with the penguins in the colony. When we arrived, Alf, leader of the pack, was chilling out on a rock while his family relaxed around him – some were even having a quick snooze whilst standing up!
We were there at the same time as Bex and her two children, so it wasn’t long before the four of them were following each other about and enjoying each others company as well as the penguins!
Some of the penguins were soon enticed over to the window by the children, who discovered that waving things at them got their attention. It was clear that the Gentoos are very fun-loving and sociable, and they were having a great time playing with the children.
After meeting the penguins, we headed around the rest of the centre to look at “the fishies!” Georgie knew that we were going to be seeing the penguins from another viewpoint on our way around the centre, so we raced through at impatient toddler speed. The jellyfish captured Georgie’s rapt attention, as did the more colourful fish and the turtles – of all sizes!
Georgie freaked out in the Ocean Tunnel though, when a shark swam very close to where I was holding her in my arms, before going over our heads. She soon cheered up when we came to the underwater penguin viewpoints though, and saw that her new friends had woken up a bit and decided to take a swim. I loved the view of the penguins that these points gave us, looking up from below as the penguins swam past from one side, and then around the corner you could see the penguins swim towards you, before turning around and shooting back up away from you.
It was remarkable how quickly the penguins swam, and I could have watched them for hours. They were just so beautiful in the water! We picked up our photo of the children that was taken at the penguin photo point using blue screen technology, and exited through the gift shop – but not before buying ourselves a new fridge magnet for our collection and some soft toy penguins for the girls, of course.
Before heading off, we doubled back to the new penguin enclosure so that we could see the penguins again as they were more awake and swimming about. We were able to see them dive into the water and jump back out after swimming the length of the pool, something they did repeatedly! The children all thought it was amazing, and it was lovely to see them run up and down the side of the enclosure watching the penguins swimming.
Bex’s children, Leah & Lewis, had also been treated to a toy penguin each at the gift shop, and so it wasn’t long before both of them and Georgie were waggling their penguins at the window to attract the attention of the swimming birds. The Gentoos were having a great time chasing their stuffed toy counterparts and clearly getting as excited as the children – they stopped getting out of the water for a short while, just swimming back and forth in front of the fluffy display of dancing toy penguins.
It was great learning so much about the penguins and being able to watch them clearly enjoying their new home. The new exhibit officially opened yesterday so if you are near to Birmingham then I definitely recommend that you check them out – as well as the rest of the Sea Life Centre, which is excellent. We visited last year and you can read that review post here.
The first time we took LP to the Sea Life centre she hated it and screamed at the fish. Now she loves it! Penguins are one of our favourite to go and see so this sounds fab! x
Haha! Georgie had a freak out in the ocean tunnel but loved everything else 🙂
Looks like you had a fab day we went to the sea life centre in London on sunday and loved it.
It was great – Georgie really enjoyed herself 🙂
We love it there, will be visiting the penguins soon!