AquaRio — Attraction in Região Geográfica Imediata do Rio de Janeiro

The Marine Aquarium of Rio de Janeiro (Portuguese: Aquário Marinho do Rio de Janeiro), or AquaRio, is a public aquarium located in the Gamboa neighborhood, in the port zone of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. With a constructed area of about 26,000 square metres (280,000 sq ft), it is located to the west of Muhammad Ali Square. It is considered the largest marine aquarium in South America.

It was inaugurated on October 31, 2016, in a ceremony that was attended by the former minister of Tourism, Marx Beltrão. The public aquarium was made at Porto Maravilha, an urban operation that aims to revitalize the Port Zone of Rio de Janeiro.

The building occupied by AquaRio has a total of 5 floors and 28 tanks with various types of fish. In the tanks, about 4.5 million liters of salt water are stored, in addition to 8 thousand animals of 350 different species. The building formerly belonged to Companhia Brasileira de Armazenamento (Cibrazem), now Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento (CONAB).

AquaRio brings together about 8,000 animals from 350 different species from all oceans. Among the main species present in the aquarium are: the nurse shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum); the whitetip reef shark (Triaenodon obesus); the blacktip reef shark (Carcharhinus melanopterus); and the sand tiger shark (Carcharias taurus). The fish are distributed in 28 enclosures, which gather a total of 4.5 million liters of salt water.

In addition to the visit to the tanks, AquaRio allows the visitor to perform the following additional activities, subject to charge separately: "Sleeping in AquaRio", where the visitor can spend a night in the tunnel that passes in the middle of the Great Ocean Tank; the "Diving of the Ocean Tank", where the visitor can dive into one of the tanks;  the "Virtual Fish", where the visitor can create a virtual friend at the beginning of the tour and interact with him along the circuit; "Behind the Scenes", where the visitor can see up close the equipment that treat the water of the enclosures, the work of the biologists and the way of realizing the feeding of the fish.

The AquaRio visitor can also enjoy the following attractions: the Virtual Aquarium, a digital aquarium with fish created by visitors  the Science Museum, composed of the Plankton Station and the Shell Exhibition; Surf, a space dedicated to the surf elaborated by the surfer Rico de Souza. As part of its structure, AquaRio has a café, a scientific research center, a parking lot and a souvenir shop, including some kiosks.

Solar roof

On May 31, 2016, the largest solar roof installed in urban areas of Brazil was inaugurated at AquaRio. Comprising about two thousand solar panels installed in an area of 6 thousand m², the solar roof will generate about 77 thousand kilowatts of energy per month, equivalent to the monthly consumption of 500 Brazilian homes. The roof reduces the consumption of electricity consumed by the aquarium...

Our last day in Rio de Janeiro, we decided on a whim to go to AquaRio, feeling confident having seen 86k reviews and a 4.6 star average. We’d been to aquariums before and always enjoyed a break from trekking outdoors. If you’ve been to aquariums in other places (for example, Phoenix, USA, or Lisbon, Portugal), you will leave AquaRio disappointed.

Firstly, for two adults, it cost us each R$160 or about $80 CAD total at the time. This is expensive but typical for this type of attraction. By the end we couldn’t believe how much money we had wasted on this experience which made our disappointment even greater.

Once you make it through the labyrinth of ramps (3 floors) and unnecessary stanchions, you expect to be treated to an enormous aquarium with loads of fish and maybe even some turtles, penguins, and so on. Instead, we were filed through a crowded aquarium like cattle with like 5 gift and snack shops and managed to get through the entire aquarium in 30 minutes — that involved stopping at every tank for on average 1-2 minutes. It was so quick we actually backtracked a bit because we couldn’t believe that was it. The experience is overly commercialized and relies on photo-opportunities and other attractions like the wax museum to build out your experience.

Many will cite the ocean tunnels as a reason to visit but they’re not novel attractions for an aquarium. There is little educational information, and no major categorization of the exhibits probably because it would show how few animals they actually have for each section — no doubt why AquaRio’s tag line is “largest aquarium in South America in litres of water” which is quite a lame claim-to-fame when you can’t reasonably rival aquariums in other major cities (from our perspective).

Finally, the bathroom facilities were outdated, under-maintained, and dirty: paint peeling, mirrors rusting, globs of hair on the counters and floors, and toilet paper in need of refilling.

We seldom write reviews and certainly don’t relish writing negative ones, but we were so deeply underwhelmed with this experience we felt compelled to share our experience...

I'm Brazilian but decided to take my Canadian husband and daughter here. Waste of time and money. I was deceived by the positive reviews here (all from Brazilians who probably had never visited another aquarium elsewhere) and didn't pay attention to reviews from foreigners (which were mostly negative). The staff allow too many people to visit at the same time without any control. People hit on the windows, eat inside, spend a lot of time in front of the tanks taking selfies in all positions for their instagram without any respect for everyone else who are there to enjoy the experience. Not one single time I saw the staff asking them to stop. I was really looking forward to passing through the tunnel and I could barely see anything because of the amount of people taking selfies and standing on the way. I've been to other aquariums before and this is one was by far the worst. Even a small attraction near my home was better organized and had a better visitor experience than this one, and way way cheaper. I'm not even mentioning the size of the tanks, that's another whole issue there.

If you actually care about fishes and want to have a good time, do not go there. It's meant for people whose main goal is to upgrade their social...