Long Island Aquarium — Attraction in Town of Babylon

Unfortunate experience! My friend & I came. They charge $50 for the majority of the aquariums attractions to be closed due to cold weather:

When you first walk in, there’s 1-2 people at the register to pay for the aquarium. Of course, there was a sign at the register that no one was being serviced at that said something along the lines of the “Penguins and (one other thing) is not available due to cold weather”. But let me continue.

My friend and I went through the entire place, and it was colder weather, but almost everything was closed. Many indoor attractions said that they were “Under construction” or had nothing in it.

We went to the outside area, and almost nothing was available to look at, which was not included in their miniature signs at the front of the aquarium. The penguin exhibit was closed, there was no seal show, the pythons weren’t there, the Mining experience wasn’t open, (understandable but) the ice cream area wasn’t open, the Koi Fish pond was 95% frozen over the top layer, so you couldn’t even SEE the fish, a cage in the bird area was empty, and it felt like a ghost town.

Next we went to the mini arcade, and for the Shooting Range game, my friend got 83 rounds of bullets on the game, and I only got 20 bullets. No one was there to service us for our issue, so we took the loss.

Next, we fed the sting rays. We paid $3 for a total of 4 mini fish to feed the sting rays. My friend said they used to give a large amount of mini fish before Long Island Aquarium was bought out by Northwell Health.

Then, we went to the butterfly exhibit, which seemed to have a total of maybe 25 butterflies. I have been to three different butterfly exhibits before, with all of those exhibits having butterflies in every direction, flying all over you. This was super unfortunate. My friend asked “where are all of the butterflies?” to one of the workers, and he proceeded to say that they were in the “process of shipping more butterflies out”.

Finally, this was the cherry on top. I felt the need to kindly express that I was dissatisfied with the services of their aquarium. I explained how I understand that there is only so much for their aquarium to do when it comes to closing areas due to cold weather but we felt robbed because there is no information advising that nearly 70% of the place is closed, and the fact that there was no butterflies in the exhibit and there is no information posted regarding anything other than the penguins and something else being closed.

I told her that the koi fish pond was completely frozen as well as everything else above.

This woman tells me that I could have checked their website to see the format of the place, and how the koi fish pond is open.

So I told her, even if I called you over the phone to ask if the koi fish pond was open, you would still have told me that the Koi Pond is “open” because you just mentioned to me right now that the pond is open and that the “fish are in there!” And she didn’t view this as misleading!

Then she said that is correct, and how “the fish are still in the pond”? I told her that’s extremely misleading and even if I were to look at your website and called you, you still would have told me the completely iced over koi pond is “Open”.

My friend, as well as my grandfather own a koi pond, and even in low temperatures, they do not have the entire pond frozen over with the fish below it!

Long story short, the woman denied my request of a partial refund. I then said, “that’s alright. I know you don’t own the company but I’ll be leaving a 1 star review”, and this woman has the nerve to say, “Okay, I’ll be looking forward to reading it”. That’s unprofessional, in my opinion.

I was nothing but respectful with addressing our concerns for the $50 price point we paid and she ended the conversation with that.

If we had received a partial refund, I wouldn’t have left this review. In conclusion, there should definitely be a winter discount for most of the place being closed! I’d recommend to stay...

My wife and I made a special trip to Long Island to revisit some of my childhood memories. Unfortunately, we had a terrible experience at this aquarium. We purchased admission tickets online before our trip, including tickets for the penguin encounters experience. This penguin encounters experience was essentially a key reason we decided to include the aquarium during our trip. My wife loves penguins and has never gotten to be up close with them.. much less meeting/petting one. The penguin encounters was scheduled for 11:15am so we got there about an hour early. After checking out the sharks for a little, we checked in with a few of their employees up front asking where we go for the encounter. The majority of them did not know for some reason but one pointed us to a sign near a bench by the turtles that said something among the lines of “encounters meet here”. We sat on the bench promptly at 11:07am waiting for the guide to pick us up. We kept our head on a swivel looking for the guide as we were excited to see the penguins together. We saw no one else waiting around so we assumed we were going to be the only ones on this encounter. 11:15 strikes and we still see no guide. I walked over to their information desk and asked “what time does the penguin encounter start and when will someone pick us up?” The employee stated “11:15 and someone should be over any minute now”. I informed the employee we were waiting over by the bench and walked back. We waited exactly 10 minutes and afraid that we were going to lose time with the penguins, went back over to the information desk to ask where the guide was. A different employee informed us that everyone was already picked up and it’s too late to go. Frustrated now, we explained that we already purchased tickets, asked numerous employees where to wait, and that we saw no employee picking anyone up for the encounter. Luckily, the original employee I spoke to at the information desk backed me up and confirmed we were here ahead of time and this made no sense. A third employee came out (assumingely a manager) who began quietly talking with the second employee and looking at stuff on the computer. They talked for about 10 minutes before we butted in asking what is going on as we just want to go meet the penguins like we paid for and are losing time. They came to a conclusion that, and I quote, “there were 5 people scheduled for this encounter and all 5 were picked up, we believe two people came for the 1:15 encounter and must’ve gotten in”. We asked if they could just bring us back because we already paid for the tickets and just want to at least each get a photo with a penguin at this point in which they responded it’s too late and there’s nothing they can do. We were absolutely speechless at this point and my poor wife was about ready to burst out in tears. Literally. They offered to get us into the 1:15 show instead but we could not do this as we were visiting from 7.5 hours away and had to travel to our next destination (1.5 hours away) in about an hour. We then asked for a refund at this point and I will say, they did “make this right” as much as they could for the situation at hand I suppose. They apologized, explained that this is fully on their employee and not our fault at all. They refunded our admission, penguin encounter admission, gave us 2 admission tickets that don’t expire for whenever we can come back, and allowed us to stay in the aquarium until we had to leave to our next destination. All in all, we are very disappointed in what happened after essentially making a trip specifically to this aquarium from 7.5 hours away to meet a penguin. We tried to meet in the middle offering to accept going in late but unfortunately had to settle on a refund. Hopefully, if we are able to return next year, we actually get to meet a penguin and this review...

9/5/24 UPDATE....SCROLL DOWM FOR THEIR RESPONSE TO MY REVIEW!

First and foremost I'd like to say that while I agree with others saying the prices are astronomical, that's not my complaint. Like everything else, prices are crazy but you know that in advance and you don't have to go if you don't want to pay the prices. With that said, I have no problem spending the money but I expect to get what I pay for. That was the furthest thing from what happened. The food and drinks are priced like Disney Land and to pay $150 to feed 5 people and get subpar food is simply unacceptable. $9 for a soda and the ice is empty? Ridiculous prices for fries, burgers, chicken sandwiches, and they're all cold? Do you know in the food service industry how long that garbage has to be sitting there to get cold while under a food lamp? Quite honestly it's disgusting. The Ice Cream/ Candy shop by the mermaid area has a stench worse than any exhibit in the aquarium. The 5 of us walked in for ice cream and walked out when the kid working was wiping the snot off of his nose. Being in the business, it's evident just from what is in customer view that food safety is a major issue at the LIA. Lastly, the only personable help there were the trainers. Everyone else is miserable and unhelpful. They seem like they hate what they do and basically are just there to hang out. Like I said, I get the prices because LIA is private and providing for the species is expensive but at some point you have to stop, step back, and recognize that there are many controllable operational opportunities that are getting in the way of customers getting what they pay for.

9/5/24 UPDATE. Look how brazen of a response from LIA as they basically told me I'm a liar like I have something to gain from cold food and no ice in the soda machine. Whoever had the audacity to write this response should quite honestly lose their job. ..... "The Atlantis Café offers many different food items at many different price points, so that there is something for everyone. In the peak of summer, when we are busiest, hot food is replenished on an “as needed” basis, with items lasting no more than 10-15 minutes in the self-service window. With heat lamps heating from above and below, set at 165 degrees, it’s almost impossible that the food was cold. However, if you were unsatisfied with your food, we really wish that you had come to the register and talked to a manager at that time. We would have gladly replaced any items you were unsatisfied with to ensure your dining experience was a positive and enjoyable one. We take food safety and sanitation very seriously. We follow all Suffolk County Department of Health Services protocols and monitor both time and temperature of the food in the self-service window.

Regarding an odor in the ice cream shop by the Snorkel tank, this is the first time we are hearing this. We didn’t have any other complaints from guests or staff about that, but we will look into it.

I really don’t know what to say to you about the staffing. It’s unfair for you to say “everyone else is miserable and unhelpful. They seem like they hate what they do and basically are just there to hang out.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. Most of our staffers have worked here for years and many of our teen employees are local students, friends and relatives of other employees. It’s an honor to work at this type of establishment and our staff understands that.

In all, we are a privately owned business trying to educate and inspire our community while helping animals in need. If you were dissatisfied with your visit, we wish you spoke with someone on staff at the time so we could rectify...