After a morning spent at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City, I drove 30 minutes south to the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium in Draper. It’s right on the highway and hard to miss as you drive around, making it a very visible and popular attraction. Let’s take a look around.
Loveland Living Planet Aquarium
Loveland Living Planet Aquarium isn’t my favorite aquarium I’ve ever been to. (I’ll always love my hometown aquarium best, I think.) Many of the tanks are small and just one family can block it for several minutes. And it’s a choppy experience, with no one path through it all. Instead, there are several rooms to choose from that you can tour in any order you wish. Some experiences leave you on a different floor than when you started, and there seems to be an inevitable amount of backtracking involved. (See my recommended touring strategy at the bottom of this post.)
Like other experiences in Utah, it’s squarely family-oriented with several touch tanks and a large kid’s play area. And it’s not all indoors, like most aquariums. The ticket building leads you back outside to a large plaza before you enter a separate building for the aquarium itself.
Outside
Part of what makes the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium so noticeable from the road is a huge stage canopy that looks sort of alien. (In fact, it is an alien, which figures into a VR experience underneath. But more on that later.) It frames a lawn and platform that forms a really nice outdoor plaza.
Farthest away from the aquarium entrance is a small coral reef-themed playground and restroom, surrounded by colorful sea creatures like an eel and crustaceans. Along one side of the stage is s a small zip line perfect for little ones. There are even Adirondack chairs and firepits scattered around, but even on a chilly day, these weren’t lit. A landscaped creek discovery area was under construction during my visit but looks like a nice outdoor area to explore.
EECO Voyager
Underneath the stage is an indoor VR experience that is included with your aquarium admission. If you didn’t reserve a spot ahead of time (which is separate from reserving admission tickets), you want to stop in here first before touring the rest of the aquarium.
There are two VR shows – an ocean one and an Amazon jungle one. I was under the impression on my visit that I could only choose one, but maybe that’s only because it was later in the day and/or crowded. If you plan it well, you can see both. They just have to be at least 45 minutes apart. I’d recommend scheduling one for before you go inside the aquarium, and another an hour and a half later, to cap off the end of your visit. But no matter when your VR show time is, you can exit the aquarium to make your show time. There’s nowhere in the aquarium where you can’t leave whenever you want to.
VR Show Experience
As for the EECO Voyager show itself, it’s pretty fun, but I’m glad I didn’t pay extra for it. Again, it’s mostly geared toward children. A cool pre-show area makes you feel like you’re in EPCOT (complete with a listless ride-show operator.) Then the room is a theater of oversized seats with attached VR headsets. Once the ride operator walks you through putting them on, you see a show hosted by a baby version of the large stage canopy. Baby alien takes you through time and space to view several scenes of either the ocean or the Amazon rainforest. The animation is fairly middling and it’s overall a little hokey, but it’s fun to look around to see the sights. I mean, I’d definitely want to see both to get the most out of my ticket price.
Entrance
Once you make it inside the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium, you’re met with a large, two-story entrance area. A large ship dominates the middle and a model humpback whale and baby hang from the ceiling. On the right are doors to different areas and stairs to the upper floor. To the left is a cafe and aquarium shop with a large model whale shark and manta rays swimming overhead.
From here, it’s a sort of choose-your-own-adventure situation, with doors leading to five different experiences and an indoor playground.
Journey to South America
The first door on your right is Journey to South America. This two-story area is an atrium, with lots of light and lush jungle plants. There are some larger animals here, like a caiman, sloth, and snakes. And some tiny ones too, like little colorful poisonous tree frogs.
In the upper story is a fun rope bridge to cross (one-way only.) When you exit the room, you’ll be on the upper floor.
Expedition: Asia
For the least amount of backtracking, at this point visit Expedition: Asia upstairs. Inside, you’ll find small-clawed otters, binturongs, large Asian fish, and birds. There’s even a clouded leopard in here. The fish are everywhere, but this aquarium has a fair amount of mammals as well.
Antarctic Adventure
Since you’re upstairs, I’d take this point to walk around the upper part of the “research ship”, then into the Antarctic Adventure. This is where the gentoo penguins live and it might be one of the best exhibits of penguins I’ve seen. If you enter from the upper floor, you see a lovely view of a normal penguin habitat. But as you go down the ramp, you get a fun view of the penguin tank from below, and especially of a spot they like to swim down to and turn around.
On the lower floor is a neon-lit “deep sea lab” that’s great for photo ops. And in the base of the research ship is a room full of jellyfish.
Discover Utah
Now that we’re back downstairs, we might as well check out Discover Utah, the second door on your right when you come in. Featuring native Utah species, we’ve got tortoises, fish, and river otters.
Ocean Explorer
In a way, the Ocean Explorer section across from the cafe is kind of the big finish to your Loveland Living Planet Aquarium experience. Here, you’ll find two touch pools, including one for stingrays, the most colorful tanks, and a clear tunnel through a large tank full of sharks.
Tuki’s Island
One more room upstairs contains Tuki’s Island, an indoor playground and party center. It’s completely closed off from the rest of the aquarium and you have to pay for your kids to play, unless you are an aquarium member. It’s $3 for two hours of playtime for kids 12 and under.
The room has tiki-themed play structures, obstacle courses, monkey bars, and slides. There’s even a separate toddler area.
Cafe & Shop
On the main level is a decent cafe counter where you can get a proper meal, or just a sweet snack. Lines were long on the Sunday I visited, so it can be pretty popular!
The way out of the aquarium is through the large gift shop. There are a lot of fun items here, so it’s worth a look around anyway. The room is high and bright, and it’s a nice way to exit a mostly-windowless experience.
Ticketing
I definitely recommend buying your tickets online. Not only is it cheaper, but the ticket counter here is set up very poorly. There are two doors to enter through – one for members and folks who have already bought tickets, and another to purchase tickets. Ostensibly, if you already have admission, you walk right in and around the corner, have your pass scanned, and on you go. During my visit, this room was packed. I don’t know if it was backed up, or a large group waiting for their entry time or what. But people were lined up and the line was not moving.
On the purchase-tickets side, the window is right at the door with no place to queue inside, so any line that forms snakes outside, no matter the weather. In fact, there is no queue at all, you kind of stand in a mass, and there were people who walked in behind me that definitely got their tickets before I did. It’s just poorly set up, especially if you have a whole separate building for ticketing that’s not connected to the rest of the aquarium. It could be anything and you chose it to be this?
Admission costs between $17.95-24.45, depending on what day you visit. Weekdays and farther in advance are generally cheaper. There are discounts for seniors 65+, military, students, and kids under 17. Children 2 and under are free. Every Monday after 4 pm is $5 cheaper. I visited on a Sunday and paid in person and it was $27. Parking is free.
Touring Loveland Living Planet Aquarium
You can tour the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium in any manner you wish. As I said, it’s a very choose-your-own-adventure setup. Between how you enter & exit each experience and my VR experience coming in the middle of my tour, I ended up backtracking a lot. I tended to walk up and down through the penguin exhibit, just because it was more interesting than taking the stairs, but I must have been through there three times at least.
If I had to do it again, I’d buy online and go in the order I’ve outlined above. Come in, do the first EECO Voyager experience, then do Journey to South America, Expedition: Asia, Antarctic Explorer, Discover Utah, then Ocean Explorer. Then I’d spend time outside, in the cafe, shop, or with the penguins or other favorite animals until my second ECCO Voyager time came up. And I’d definitely try to do it on a weekday or Monday night.
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