New England Aquarium Reviews

You have to stay for a while to make it worth the admission fee, but it really is a great place.

Place was great! Just rude inconsiderate people, the only drawback! Not staff, but patrons!

Seeing all the animals was so cool. All the employees were nice and friendly. My favorite part was touching the starfish and sting ray.

Two much crowded.buy pass online to avoid wasting time

Great look inside and many great sea animals, BUT there were far too many school kids making so much noise we had to leave before planned. This place should be open for only school kids one day a week, and closed for the rest of the audience. Expensive.

Really solid experience. Worth it for the sea turtles alone.

Such a nice experience. Definitely buy E Tickets before hand if you're going on the weekends.

I highly recommend this aquarium. We didn't stay for the whole day but we were able to see the majority of the place. They have a giant sea turtles, sea lions, an octopus. The sharks and rays touch tank was a favorite. I wish we could have seen one of the penguin shows. Overall a great experience! You can get passes for it at some libraries too.

I loved this place. You will get lost while watching so many different aquatic creatures. You can touch a string ray!

I attended a volunteer orientation, Ryan was friendly and informative about all the volunteer opportunities available.

Exceeded all expectations. Better than the Shed or Packard.

Beautiful and interesting, but too hot and crowded during school holidays.

We've in the aquarium on Wednesday, it was a bit crowded, but that fact didn't stop us to enjoy our visit. And the most impressive emotion we got from stroking rays, fishes, starfishes.

Turtle was huge..elegant..I would love for them to be all let go but..what can we do.. stop buying plastic!

The best Aquarium we have ever been to. My favorite part was the New England lobsters of various ages. I have family that commercially fishes for them and have been lobstering myself. I knew of the size limits in Maine but didn't know the growth cycles. My kids loved the touch pools.

Such a great place to bring family and relax. It's stunning and educational. The divers were so friendly and taught me a lot about the animalsthat lived there. Especially the 90+ year old Sea Turtle! It's so great that I can take my children and it be just as fun as it was when I was a kid.

So expensive!!! Lots of nice fish!!! You can touch a stingray!!!

Nice, but we thought there would be more to see.. a little disappointing

Amazing aquarium , they have the biggest turtles and a lot of beautiful penguins.

Be wary of the safety, I went there with my nephew and he wanted to take one of the penguins home with him. He noticed how they are kept in PRISON-LIKE CONDITIONS and he felt bad for them. His compassion toward the penguin community was so great that when I went to the bathroom, he was CLIMBING INTO THE PENGUIN PIT when I came back! The staff didn't seem to be phased that my young nephew was endangered by both the penguins AND the penguin pit! Why was this? I'm no genius but if I had to take a guess it was because they wanted to IMPRISON HIM JUST LIKE THE PENGUINS IN THE PENGUIN PIT!

NOT A FAN OF ANIMAL CRUELTY

Although a great place to bring your kids..we had to wait in line for over two hours kind of ruined the day with si much wasted time..they need a better system for sure!

We had a great time. One drawback is that it was very crowded and i would suggest going on the least busy day possible. Also the cafeteria is nice but very expensive, it would probably easily cost a family of 4 $80 to have a baaic lunch there, sad but true.

They have Penguins!
What more do you need.

Definitely a place to put on the guest list, if you have kids even better, the little ones go crazy. And the surrounding area is beautiful.

Expensive. Bring your own food and drinks if you can. The touch tanks are awesome, and overall a great place to see some crazy critters!

Really nice attraction if you're coming from out of town! Been twice and loved it each time!

Born and raised just outside of Boston, and recently came back to visit. This reminded me of my childhood. Even as an adult, this aquarium is still amazing.

This aquarium houses a greater variety of sea creatures than most people even knew existed, and some of them you can touch! Well, I suppose you could touch a lot of them if you really tried, but that's generally frowned upon....

It was very informative. Lots of touch pools and great for little children. Amazing fish and it sits right on top of the Harbor. Another great thing to see. I recommend the Aquarium as a stop on your trip.

The Octopus rocks and was doing some cool dances for us!
We spent 30 bucks to take mini pics home with a frame and the guy cut the pictures uneven

This is a fun afternoon trip. You don't need all day. The seals are awesome and you can see them out front without paying to go inside

Not the best aquarium in USA but is still good. If you are visiting Boston area is a good option to visit with family

It was fun, colorful and entertaining! Kid loves it.

A bit pricey, but very worth it, love the penguins.

Not better than the one in Baltimore... But it's great.

My friends and I went on a hot summer day and ended up having a blast! We are all young so we didn't have a lot of money to spend, but we were able to see a lot! My favorite part was definitely petting the stingrays!

Too overpriced for the size of the aquarium. It was a robbery

A great place for kids and families. A big variety of aquatic life and the giant cylendar tank is amazing. It has turtles, sharks, and tons of other big and colorful fish... There's even penguins! Parking is expensive in the nearby parking garage ($40) for just a couple hours. You can get special deals at your local library so it's worth checking out to save some money.

This is a nice aquarium. Small for where I normally go (Camden NJ and Baltimore MD). They have a creative take on how to experience their setup but no one really follows the arrows and are not forced a specific way around. This creates crowd mayhem.

Is this the best aquarium I have been to? No. That goes to the Tampa Bay Aquarium.

When I am back in Boston I will definitely think about coming back.

Great place. I love Aquariums. The best part was to walk in and see so many penguins.

I always have a great time here, but it is a bit pricey.

Well done, very modern. But there are quite large aquariums. For the size a bit expensive.

I have been to this aquarium 2x now. First time was a few years ago I went with my boyfriend and our kids (3&4 years old) I thought it was awful but kept it to myself because kids seemed to like it.

Today I brought my now six year old. First, we had to stand in line for approximately 45 minutes (longer than it took to look at exhibits) . Then to pay about $50.00 just for entry! To go in to a crazy mob scene. People EVERYWHERE no maximum capacity? Strollers all over, the lighting was awful, tanks were filthy, two sea turtles except one was just plunked on a rock lifeless. No sharks. Forget the touch center total chaos my daughter couldn't even see over the wave of people. So over priced for nothing. Not to mention paying $32 just to park my car for two hours ..

Mystic aquarium is so much bigger more beautiful, bigger variety, fair in price with discount.

I went with anticipation for the new shark exhibit. I was disappointed it's just one large room with a giant plastic shark in the middle. It's fun if you have kids with you but it really only takes about an hour to walk through the whole building. I strongly recommend getting Museum passes from your local library first it brings the ticket price from $30 down to $10.

expensive and disappointing compared to Shedd aquarium in Chicago

Wouldn't recommend, 90% of the tanks have fake coral in them and way too much fish.
Very overcrowded tanks.
Actually every tank looks way too small for the ammount/size of fish.
Happen to have a salt-water aquarium at home and I see so much going wrong in terms of quality management.
Wouldn't go here for sure.

Very interesting aquarium but I was very disappointed with the shark section. There was only a very small shark and a shark egg. The movie was good and the furseals were very funny.

If I had had to pay full price I would have been very disappointed there's not much there compared to what I thought they used to be there.

A pleasant experience as always. I highly recommend getting the City Pass and including the Aquarium in it. Staff is very helpful as usual. My 8 year old and 3 year old love coming here.

Love the new floor to ceiling tropical tank. Harbor seal and penguin shows are also great. As are the ray and other animal touch tanks.

So it s always nice to see animals, which is why there are 3 stars at all-all are for the animals. Like a prior review, it s one tank don t get me wrong it s a cool tank but there is only one. The penguin exhibits are cool, a little depressing as they seem surrounded by screaming onlookers constantly, not sure if they ever see the sun. Facility lighting like all aquariums is dark to better enjoy the tanks and likely for the animals too. Considering this darkness, the place doesn t seem to have a crowd limit. Got there at opening, in about 45 minutes the place was jam packed with strollers everywhere and I mean EVERYWHERE, and some were like a wall of stroller with two seated options. The place needs to consider a guest limit or ditch the strollers, felt like a potential death trap left before we could finish appreciating the exhibits to preserve our sanity.

Being able to touch Stingrays, starfish, horseshoe crabs, sharks and sea anemone were the best part. The coral reef is pretty cool too. The only negative is the rude people!!!