Below is a review I wrote about the penguin tour I had, enjoy.
Before I get started with this review, I should note that I have a background with working at an Aquarium, so I might get a bit more technical, if anybody needs me to clear something up, let me know.
Yesterday I did the Ultimate Penguin Insider tour and this is a write up of it. It started off with some confusion as to what entrance we were supposed to take, let me tell you now, it's the employee entrance. You could probably chalk it up to being the first day, but it's still unfortunate that it was delayed due to poor communication.
The meet up location was in the England parking lot, from there we were taken to the Royal Palace Theater. The place was still being put together when we got there, so we kind of had to be careful. They had two species of penguins, Magellanic and African Black Foot (ABF). The enclosures for the Magellanic weren't up yet so they weren't on display for us, but the ABF were and they were swimming about. The keeper (who's name escapes me, but was awesome none the less) told us a bit about them. The birds they had were fairly young so they didn't have their adult colors yet. That's fine with me since I know that's what normally penguins do, but the general population has no idea and some visitors might walk away thinking that the animals they saw weren't penguins (I mention this because my walk through later in that day, there were people who didn't think they were, in fact, penguins).
After she talked about them, she opened up for questions. I always feel bad because I sometimes ask questions which are really and detailed. For instance, they birds normally swim in salt water but the tank had fresh water, I asked if the birds had any problems with buoyancy since water salinity can affect that. I was impressed when she was able to answer that. I did find it odd that I was the only person who asked questions.
After the QA, they fed the birds in front of us, which is not something the GP gets to see that often. Once they were fed a little, they brought us behind the enclosure area to look at the filtration system (I've cleaned bigger.
) and to get a close up of the ABFs. They came out of the exhibit so we could get a close look without glass and were even still being fed. Once everybody was done with that, we all went back out and waited to see the second type of penguin they had there, the Magellanic.
A keeper brought a female out and sat on a bench, from there we all got to sit by her and pet it. She was full grown so you saw her adult colors, which was nice. This was probably the highlight of the tour for me because I love getting to interact with animals. For the most part, the bird was very calm and didn't react to being touched by unknown people, which is always a good sign of an animal being cared for well.
After that, the tour was over. Getting back to the parking lot was somewhat of a challenge because there was still a lot of work being done and there were tons of trucks and golf carts around.
From what I understand, the only time for the ultimate tour was at noon, which can be a problem since the tour is about 45 minutes long, you have a good two hours before they even let people into England. I wish that they had a small area for guests to chill during that time instead of having to wait that long and get into parking again.
There was a photographer there with us the entire time, and it was neat being given those pictures at the end of the day. My main issue is that you were given all the pics taken, even those of other people. These pics ended up being a majority and when I deleted them, it cut the picture count down by 75%. I honestly think it just would have been easier to email the pics.
Overall, as an animal fan, I thought the $30 for the tour was worth it. I'm not sure if that price is justifiable to those who don't have as much as an interest especially if you have a multiple unit family.
