Oceanogràfic Aquarium in Valencia

Oceanogràfic Aquarium in Valencia is the largest aquarium in Europe. Here you will find a wide variety of marine animals, including sharks, dolphins and a wide range of sea turtle species. It’s not only a fun but also an educational experience for children.

What surprised us was that Aquarium Oceanogràfic in Valencia is not a single building, as is usually the case when visiting aquariums. It’s a huge area with different buildings and aquatic wildlife themes. There is a huge dolphinarium where performances take place. Be sure to visit the bird dome – and you have to be careful as the staff warns. We were lucky, but our neighbours who walked by were not very… Because the birds are high up and don’t always warn of danger…

Our children really liked the underwater tunnels, there are more than one, and especially the huge swimming turtles. I also liked the dolphins’ performance – calm, the animals were more frolicking than “working”, a philosophy that is now applied in many Spanish aquariums and zoos.

There are even a few restaurants in the area, ranging from expensive ones to simpler snack bars and kiosks. We tried the restaurant – the service is fast, the food is nothing special, but it’s really edible. We chose to eat in the restaurant because we didn’t want to snack on junk food. The kids were happy eating spaghetti, we had risotto and bowl.

There are playgrounds and educational areas where older children can learn about the diversity of wildlife.

Our advices and tickets

Give the park a good half day, and if you’re travelling with smaller children, don’t plan anything else for that day.

We bought tickets for all the museums as one and saved a lot of money – there are several options to choose from. We bought the three-ticket package – Oceanogràfic + Science Museum + Hemisferic.

You can only buy for the Aquarium, but we highly recommend buying in advance as the queues are long on arrival. Even when we left around 3pm there were still long queues at the ticket office.

With these tickets, you go straight to the entrance and immediately enter the Aquarium area. Be sure to check the information to see when the dolphin shows are, when the cinema is open and take a map of the park.