Gran Acuario Mazatlán "Mar de Cortés" — Attraction in Sinaloa

SHARKS & Stingray Experience is worth every dollar you paid. That building /facility is world class. Clean and Newly renovated. Lots of sea animals that looks happy and healthy. Experience to feed baby stingrays for extra $7 is amazing!!!!

LACK OF ENGLISH TRANSLATION: The place have about 3 staff that speaks english. The signages are ALL in Spanish which makes it impossible for most tourits to enjoy what they are looking at or even try to attempt to find direction.

STAFF CONCERN PAULINA a staff from where you buy the tickets by the gate, is very rude, mocks customers, and lacks customer service skills all together. We were here on May 16, 2024. She will mock tourist and rolls her eyes - for someone who does not speak or understands English she has some attitude that will serve her better if she is the one cleaning the toilets. This left a very bad impression to us and the rest of the group that went with us from the CRUISE Ship group. Management needs to get more people that speaks English AND TEACH YOUR STAFF PROPER CUSTOMER SERVICE SKILLS.

I can see that this place will lose its glamour quickly if they do not keep up with the maintenance of the place. Again, the place was newly renovated, so it still looks nice at the moment. But the lack of having English translation on signages will quickly become an issue. I do not see that this place will stay afloat with having only locals come here as the gate entrance is pricey for locals I can imagine ($32 US) is a lot for most locals. The facility is small - we were able to walk the whole thing and even spent an hr on the sharks / stingray building, I think in total we were able to do the whole thing in under 2.5 hr w/ 45 mins sealion show (that was also in Spanish only).

This is worth it if you are a sharks or stingray fan. Download a translation app. Only about 2% will be able to assist you in English if you need direction...

While the aquarium was a fun experience itself and the seal show was awesome. We also had some bad experiences and some of the staff here were rude.

The food court was super packed with a lot of the kids being unsupervised by their teachers/chaperons and left a lot of messes behind without cleaning after themselves. Not only that, my family got food poisoning after eating here which it was the only thing we had eaten that day and was sick for days so I would avoid eating chicken there. But most importantly avoid the time shares people at all costs, don’t be fooled by them especially when they say “the resort owns the aquarium” and what they tell you is all a lie. It’s a complete waste of time and unfortunately we fell for their lies. When they offer you free stuff — it’s not FREE. The aquarium needs to do something about those time share people — we had told them no a few times at the beginning but later we caved in to say yes so they could leave us alone after already taking up our time which caused us to miss a few things because of closing time.

If it wasn’t for the resort time share people and the food poisoning, I would have given this...

The condition of the aquarium is just not good. They offer 2 packages, the basic one includes a seal lion show which is the only good thing about the aquarium. They also have a bird show, which is great if you have never visited a zoo, but otherwise is boring. And finally the chance to roam around and see the animals that they have, but mostly just empty water tanks.

The premium package includes the penguin exhibit which is actually nothing, they only have one group of penguins and you will only walk into a room, see them and get out into the rest of the aquarium. The penguin exhibit is a scam in my opinion.

The website also has other activities but beware that when I visited they said that those activities weren't always available. Like swimming with sharks. Make sure you call ahead and ask because their website will not tell you.

I visited the aquarium with family members that had visited the aquarium years ago, and from their memories the condition of the aquarium is not even close to how it was before. So, beware of all the older reviews with 5 stars, try to read recent reviews to base...