Mount Desert Oceanarium — Attraction in Bar Harbor

We spent 40 hours a month here (according to my google maps app) last summer. I have a kid who loves all things ocean & water related and our annual pass was the best money we spent last year.

Animal feedings are at 2pm, and I think most folks spent maybe an hour or so there. If your kids are older and not absolutely ocean obsessed? Don’t expect to be there forever.

You have younger kids? You need to stop for a rest with them between more exhausting activities? This is a good rest stop. There’s an indoor lobster boat they can play on, with a sand box. There’s an outside boat with a slide. There’s picnic tables and they renovated the bathrooms this past winter.

Like birds? There’s an Osprey nest you can see from the shore.

The staff is lovely and welcoming. The aquarists are happy to share information and tell you all about the animals. Everyone there is doing a great job rejuvenating a...

We went there on a rainy morning hoping for something to do while the weather moved out. $40 was too much for two adults and a child. I understand that it cost money to run the place, but still too much for admission.

The touch tank was not something where kids could just go ahead and reach in. Instead, a staff person was lecturing and passing things around.

The lobster hatchery was all lecture and DO NOT TOUCH. I'm sorry, we were all bored out of our minds.

Maybe it would have been better if it wasn't rainy and we could have walked around the salt marsh, but if we were looking for a walk, we could just walk in Acadia.

Again, I'm sorry, I usually give places like this a half decent review, but this place was lame and definitely not somewhere to bring a...

I really tried to find information before we went, about whether this would be a good fit for my 2 year old. Turns out it's not. $16pp and you sign on for a 1.5 hour long tour with a guide. The touch tank gets mentioned a lot in brochures and the website, but it was going to be an hour into the tour. It's not an open facility like a museum where you can move from thing to thing at your own pace. So, this is a review from not having entered, but having spoken to the kind and friendly staff at the counter. I wish the brochures and website mentioned that tours are required. They said that they had less flexibility because a tour bus full of people had come, so maybe it's not...