Aquarium Nausicaa Boulogne Sur Mer — Attraction in Boulogne-sur-Mer

A rather frustrating day out. We visited as a family of 6, 2 adults and 4 children under 11, one of whom was in a pushchair. The pushchair access was rather disappointing, long queues for tiny lifts which were located away from the staircases. My husband ended up carrying the pushchair up/down most of the stairs, of which there are a lot. Quite a few of the staircases took you up for a 10 metre. or so stretch for a few information boards before bringing you back down again.

Navigating around the site was also challenging. I appreciate our French is very limited but of the 3 areas, one are had a very good map with numbers and French/English translations, the other two areas were lacking and hard to navigate around. It also wasn't clear whilst going round how to navigate back. It was busy on the day we visited and therefore very hot inside (about 22 degree outside temp), almost suffocatingly so.

We were also disappointed with the number of marine animals there. It bills it as the the largest aquarium in Europe, having been to other similar places, I would say it is an aquarium that has the largest tank in Europe, but probably not the largest in itself.

We had travelled to France by le Shuttle and as per their website asked for the 15% discount off the entry price (when you produce your boarding pass). We had to ask several times for the discount to be applied and had to add up the value of our tickets and show the discount being applied as they were trying to charge full price. Even then, we only managed to secure a 10% discount and we also had to fight to be given a free audio device as per le shuttle's offer.

On the plus side, the facts given about the marine life and conservation areas were given in both French and English and were easy to read. The children also seemed oblivious to our frustrations with the stairs and lack of navigation and enjoyed the day out. Altogether a bit...

Well worth the price!

I wont lie - at nearly £100 to enter for the family, it certainly makes you think, 'Is it worth it?' but on a rainy and cold June Saturday, it certainly was! We spent a good four hours there and could've spent more but the younger kids in the group were getting a bit over it.

Everything is so very well thought out and planned, there is English and French written descriptions of everything with plenty of dual lingual interactive things to do along the way including quizzes etc.

If you're from the UK and thinking it's probably just going to be like another Sea Life Centre, it's NOTHING like that. The scale of it is incredible and it's all been done with care and consideration - it's not one of the places where you start to feel sorry for the animal in captivity.

There's a huge range of exhibits covering all areas of the ocean including the damage humans are doing - the kids in our group knew all about that from school so were quite into that part.

But there's a huge tank you can walk through, sea lions, penguins, sharks, sting rays, tropical fish etc and some really good exhibits on the lesser discovered parts of the oceans and the strange creatures lurking there which captured the kids imaginations because the fish there look like aliens.

We bought our tickets online which helped with the entrance queuing, we chose an 1130 slot but rocked up at 1000 and no one said anything, and we didn't get the audio guide as I always think they're a bit restrictive, but you don't really need it anyway if you can read English or French.

So it can feel a little pricey when you're buying the tickets but it's totally worth it - we took a packed lunch rather than go to the cafe which was so busy!

There's really nothing like it in the UK so definitely add it to your list of things to do in...

We visited this large aquarium with my family and spend about 8 hours there. The place is definitely large and the main attraction is the giant aquarium with sharks, a giant manta ray, a sea turtle and other fish. We arrived at 10:30.

Unfortunately, that is also it, nothing out of the ordinary that one cannot see in any other aquarium. There are a lot of mini aquariums with jelly fish and other little fish, eels and king crabs, a seal show (only in French).

We can spend a lot of time there because the place was so crowded and huge. We also had to wait about 45 minutes go get into the cafeteria so we can order some food. The menu was confusing to us and we couldn’t really make out exactly what they were offering.

In terms of looking at the exhibition, so many times people were pushing themselves in the way, even in front of our kids. I guess, for the price of paying 106€ for two adults and two kids, you wanna make it count. Reading the previous reviews, I was not really concerned. People getting a little pushy sometimes is normal, however this was way too much for us. I have to give a time of my arrival when pre-ordering tickets, so why not putting up max visitors number. It would make the visit much more pleasant for everyone.

All in all, for that price, the large area didn’t just cut it for me. I expected more. Size is...