Miami Seaquarium

Visitors to the Miami Seaquarium will find plenty of fun in the sun with shows, presentations, exhibits, and other activities designed to both thrill and amaze you. The 38-acre aquarium in Miami is home to dolphins, sea turtles, killer whales, sea lions, and manatees, and visiting is one of the best things to do on a Miami vacation if you're interested in the local wildlife.

The shows at the Seaquarium in Miami are spectacular and include two shows featuring dolphins. The Top Deck Dolphin Show highlights the aerial antics of bottlenose dolphins, which delight visitors with their acrobatic leaps and rolls. If you'd like to see them outside of the show, the dolphins are visible throughout the day above and below water through the viewing windows.

The Flipper Dolphin Show features Atlantic bottlenose dolphins performing in the lagoon on the original TV set for the show Flipper. This show at the Seaquarium in Miami spotlights the agility and intelligence of these mammals as they jump, spin, flip, and do their famous tail walks choreographed to musical tunes.

Miami Seaquarium also features Lolita the killer whale and Pacific dolphins putting on their own show. Visitors will see Lolita walk on water as she responds to her trainers instructions. At the Golden Dome Sea Lion Show, Salty the Sea Lion and his seal friends entertain visitors with their hilarious antics and comedy skits.

The Seaquarium in Miami provides several outstanding attractions that include the Shark Channel Presentation, where specialists feed the massive 200-pound sharks and educate visitors about various species of sharks in the wild. The Manatee Presentation allows visitors poolside to get close to one of the most popular marine mammals that reside in Florida waters.

Several feeding presentations take place at the Seaquarium in Miami, including the Tropical Reef Presentation, where divers inside a 750,000-gallon saltwater tank hand-feed a variety of aquatic species including large groupers, moray eels, loggerhead turtles, cobia, and assorted tropical reef fishes. At the Seal and Sea Lion Feeder Pool, visitors can observe the frolicking California sea lions and harbor seals and have an opportunity to feed them.

Visitors can also view alligators, native Florida birds, sea turtles, wildlife, and fish in a natural mangrove setting at Discovery Bay Presentation. This aquarium in Miami also features exhibits including Tropical Wings with birds and reptiles, Atlantic and Caribbean Fish Aquariums with a variety of marine life, and Crocodile Flats featuring 25 Nile crocodiles that average 16 feet and 1,000 pounds when fully grown.

Visitors interested in getting even closer to the wildlife are likely to enjoy the interactive activities at the aquarium in Miami, including the Dolphin Encounter and Dolphin Odyssey. Both programs provide hands-on interaction with the dolphins at Dolphin Harbor. The Encounter program allows guests to participate in up-close activities that include feeding, touching, and learning how to train the dolphins in the shallow water portion of the harbor, while the Odyssey program takes place in deeper waters, where participants interact with the dolphins one-on-one with even more activities, including a dolphin ride from one side of the pool to the other.

Miami Seaquarium is open from 9:30 am until 6:00 pm daily, with the last shows starting at 2:30 pm. Tickets for admission to the aquarium can be purchased up until 4:30 pm. Visitors to the aquarium in Miami should allow a minimum of four hours for their trip, and if they're interested in other animal-related activities in the city, they should also consider visiting the Miami Metrozoo. A combined ticket is available for admission to both of these attractions, and travelers of all ages are sure to find that learning about the local wildlife is an excellent addition to time spent shopping or on the beaches during a Miami vacation.