Portland Aquarium

Be aware right off the bat: This is nothing compared to the Monterey Bay aquarium or the Baltimore aquarium. It’s tiny and there’s not a ton of stuff to see. That being said, the staff was super friendly and the exhibits were pretty cool. I love how they have interactive exhibits where you can hand feed rays, Sharks, fish, ducks and lorikeets. Too bad the place is closing.

This was nowhere near what I would call an aquarium. It’s super small, some of the tanks were extremely dirty and there was at least one tank that had dead sea creatures in them. Also, the shark tank literally had one small shark with some fish. They do have a few hands on tanks, so that was nice. This place is not worth the admission prices, for sure. We felt lucky that we had gotten a Groupon for our tickets, so we paid way less than normal admission. We won’t be going back here.

We’re from California and I must say our aquarium is ALOT bigger. But I’d rather go here. It’s a lot more intimate and you can feed almost all animals. The employees are very sweet. Mia in the lorikeets was very funny and sweet. It’s worth it to buy the tokens and feed the animals. Very fun

It’s a small aquarium with giant red octopus, giant green lizard, and giant pythons. My teenager and I really enjoyed our hour and a half at Portland Aquarium.
It is a very hands on kind of place and you are encouraged to touch (maybe the manta rays), some of the fish, moveable sea animals, and even the green lizard named Wesley. Feeding the residents are encouraged and even pushed. Food is kind of expensive, so we chose not to. If my daughter was much younger, we would have forked over the money for the feed. The stingrays had so much personality and very friendly, and I imagined they were begging for food.
The Aquarium is divided into 7 galleries and the gallery rooms were all full of interest. Don’t expect Monterey Aquarium kind of place, but a mom and pop kind of feel small aquarium you can be happy taking your little and even big ones. We loved our visit and glad to have made it to the Portland Aquarium in the suburb of Milwaukee.

I bought the tickets at a discounted price through groupon. Anything higher than the price I paid I would have been disappointed.
It is small. Maybe my expectations were high. When you first walk in you step into the gift shop with theme park prices. Of course high prices are to be expected but wow.
The first room is a little dark but the tanks are right there for easy viewing for kids. That’s cool. There’s an iguana there just chillin so you can pet it. There are more aquariums in the next rooms. Ducks and fish in a small indoor pond. Loud cage with birds. You can sit inside and watch the birds. A couple snakes and frogs along with other reptiles are around. We did get some back ground on the birds and the guy was nice enough to get s bird out for the kids to pet. There’s a wind machine I think it was $ 2. Kids liked it. The biggest tank is for the stingrays. You can pet and feed. $ 5 for 3 pieces of fish. It’s ok they are trying. My kids liked. It is a short visit maybe an hour.

Great place for families with younger children. This aquarium is clearly not supposed to be one of those big aquariums with whales and what not. It is a hands on aquarium designed for families with young children. Our kids had the best time being able to touch and feed the fish.
It is a little overpriced with charging roughly 10 bucks for kids 2 and up and 13ish dollars for adults. Personally I would not spent that much to get in but with a great Groupon it’s definitely worth a visit.

I’ve seen petshops that were more informative and clean than this joint. Wet floors, poor display design, and unclean tanks. Some tanks had fish that were too small for the aquarium. Sad fish. And a duck that was so anxious that it pulled it’s feathers out from stress. Sorry place, poor animals. Lumpy floors and runaway brats make browsing tenuous and treacherous. Beware!

Yesterday was our 1^st visit. We really enjoyed it. Absolutely loved the interactive focus & the friendliness of the staff. We will go back.

This is more of a glorified petsmart then an aquarium. There were some issues with the lights on some tanks so you could t even see all of it, but definitely not a destination aquarium.

This aquarium is a decent size. Somewhat small but VERY interactive. They have so many touch pools and a bird aviary. I would definitely recommend coming here for people of all ages.

Just visited here with my 2 year old daughter. This is a small aquarium and so expectations should be for that experience. The staff here was great! So kind. Very sweet to my daughter as she bought food to feed the sting rays and when we bought a small toy from the gift shop. Very patient with questions and also gave great instructions about the layout and types of food available to feed the animals.
My daughter loved all the interesting fish and the touch tanks. Almost everything is open so you can touch the animals. We did not see any kids mistreating animals when we were there. Everyone was very respectful of the ‘two finger’ pet rule.
The tanks around the facility appeared clean and the fish active in their environments. The only thing I saw that bothered me was a large eel in a tank that looked much too small for it. Wish they would get him a bigger home.
The sting rays are the MOST fun and a few will splash you for food, so take an extra change of clothes for the kids if you are planning to feed the rays just in case you get really wet. The stingrays were our favorite part.
The four stars relates to the admission price. The children’s cost was a bit steep however, I’m sure deals could be found if I had bothered to look. Parking was easy and we went right in when they opened on a Monday. It was busy, but easy to see and do anything we wanted. There are birds and reptiles, which don’t really seem to fit and didn’t interest us.
Overall it was a really nice trip for about an hour with my daughter and she loved it here. Young kids I think will enjoy it most, although I admit I had a great time!

I loved this place with my kids. Yeah it is small, yeah the doesn’t have the coolest facilities, yeah it is geared to kids. …but man. .to have some time with my kids and see their cool fish and lizards. We had a great time.
The highlight were the Stingrays! Simply awesome.

Beautiful cozy atmosphere. Stuffs are so friendly and welcoming. Always smiling and answering any question. My son enjoyed his time so much. He was so excited to see wonderful sea world. This place very need and clean. Organized pretty much and they had little cute gift shop.

It was fun. Buy your tickets online, saves $ 3 per person. It was more like a fish tank museum BUT the Bat Ray exhibit was completely amazing. They are in a waist high tank and come swarming to you to let you pet them. The cost of the ray food was steep at $ 3 for four 1/​8″ pieces of fish. It was really fun to feed them unfortunately you want to do it more than what they give you and don’t want to pay more than $ 3 for a piece of fish. There is a koi pond with a ton of koi that you can feed. Not sure how much the koi food was. I didn’t want to pay $ 3 for what I am sure was some generic dog food.
They have a couple of iguanas and a set of chameleons. Cant pet them. I noticed that they are building tortoise enclosure. They have a lorikeet enclosure that you can buy nectar for. Not sure how much that is either.
YOU CAN BUY ANY OF THE FOOD FOR THE ANIMALS AT ANY TIME DURING YOUR TRIP. THE TICKETS ARE GOOD FOR ALL DAY.
There are a few snakes. A tiny jungle gym for little kids a standard overpriced gift shop.

Yes, this place is small. Yes, there aren’t a million exhibits and a million different animals to see like Seattle or Monterey Aquariums. It’s not even fair to compare to them, though. Those are big full-​fledged research and educational organizations. Portland Aquarium is a mom-​and-​pop DIY endevour that is all about fun fun fun! A tiny place? Sure, but they used the space they had very efficiently. They certainly had enough interesting animals to make the experience interesting. There have information each of the animals on display, albeit, generally less detailed than a major aquarium.
Where this aquarium really shines is the interaction. You can pet many of the animals there. There’s even a fair sized feeding pool with rays and sharks. The rays are just adorable, and just love playing and being petted by visitors. They were like puppies. A-​freaking-​dorable.
You can also feed birds in the aviary (not through a cage — but with the lorikeet perched on your finger). If you pay extra, you can also do the octopus encounter, which is a unique and wonderful experience. You get to go back stage and spend time playing with their giant pacific octopus. You literally get to pet the octopus and have the octopus put it’s tentacles all over your hands. It’s a pretty amazing experience.
This place is extremely kid-​friendly. They are set up to throw childrens’ birthday parties as well as an overnight stay they call «Sleep With The Sharks!»
This is a fun fun place that has DIY written all over it. Hand-​written signs, hand made exhibits, and the staff is great — they genuinely like working here. Don’t expect something grand and exquisite. This is a labor of love. If you have kids, you definitely should take them.

How unbelievably amazed at some of the haters of this place. Some of the reviews were downright mean and in my opinion uncalled for. This is a small business it’s not Sea World. You can tell the people who work here love animals and want to share the joy!
We took our two small children (3,5) to this aquarium and had a wonderful time. We will be purchasing the season pass and look forward to the thrills of touching and feeding some of the animals.

I read review and had some history on this establishment. So I had some pre conceived negative opinion slightly formed. But on a super cold day when the zoo or parks were outta the question I did some research and decided to give this place a go. 20 month old, 15 year old, husband and parents along.
You walk into a cashier/​gift shop area. Yes, this must be an old Sea Galley genre restaurant. Typical gift shop with GREAT prices for gifts. Most items were about 30−50% less than your large aquariums. The staff who got us all checked in with a great Unilocal 20% off gave us a great roll down of the different exhibits, prices for aquarium critter treats and a tip on in between hand washing.
THIS IS A HANDS ON AQUARIUMS.
The snakes were cool.
The birds were parakeets, not my thing. I enjoy but would want more or none.
Lots of hands on tanks. Which I love. I feel bad for the critters but they have signs about the «2 finger rule of petting» seems appropriate and the patrons we observed were very kind.
The sting ray tank was my favorite. It was like puppies in water. The sting rays were very interactive and enjoyed being fed. I could sit and watch them all day
Many more tanks and watching. Most tanks were available to view above and through glass. They had numerous stool, ladders and rock formations for the little ones to get a great glance.
I liked this aquarium so much. I have visited aquariums all over the US and I enjoyed this one LOTS because I could touch and feel.
Great for ages 19 months — 68.

I moved to Portland from the Nevada desert and was really excited to be able to play tourist in a new city as I got acquainted. It took us a while to find time to make it to the aquarium, but we found a groupon and it was about to expire so we made the time.
This place is a riot. We are both adults, and we don’t have kids. We expected something nicer from this aquarium than what we got, and we should have known the moment we started into Milwaukie that we weren’t going to get something like the larger aquariums, but I still think the trip was worth it for the amount of laughter we got the moment we pulled into the parking lot. Tears were streaming down our faces because, as has been noted, this looks like a revamped Red Lobster. We’d already bought the tickets and we weren’t getting our money back, so we just went in and figured we’d still have a memorable experience, because we’d make it.
We were greeted by the door flying open and the lady rushing us to get inside. It was cold and we didn’t argue, but we were perplexed until she told us one of the birds got out of the rainforest enclosure and was flying around in the rafters. Okay. Well. Fine. We were treated to this information every time we walked into a different room until they got the bird grounded and put away. It was funny and tiresome, and it also meant the bird exhibit was closed. That was also fine, because the shrill chirping was enough after about five minutes while we walked through.
The aquarium tanks were largely underwhelming. Most of them looked like something I could build in my apartment, up to and including the moon jellyfish. The giant octopus was neat looking, but I don’t know if it’s ever going to be worth the extra money to interact with it. The lights in a couple of the smaller tanks were completely out, which was a bummer, because you couldn’t see the things inside. By far, the giant open tank with the rays and sharks is the best part. The rays are super friendly and really adorable, and I spent most of my time there just playing with them because they’re like water cats and I loved it.
It took us less than 30 minutes to tour this place alone. I think most people have hit it square on the head when they say this place is great for kids. I saw several people with their kids there, and they were super into it. If I could rent someone’s child to bring here, I would do that. We DID make this memorable and it wasn’t a waste of a trip, but if it’s your first time don’t go in expecting anything like Monterrey Bay aquarium, or even Newport.

I love aquariums and I love awesomely bad things, like Nic Cage movies. I got the Livingsocial deal so I can see how shitty this place is. I couldn’t stop laughing when we pulled into the parking lot. The place looks like and is the size of an old Red Lobster that was painted blue instead of red. The place is tiny, there are «DOZENS» of exhibits, says a poster.
The entrance is the gift shop and you have to walk through it to get to admission. It’s humid and the entire place smells like a fish tank. Ok, one might expect it to smell since it’s an aquarium but most places also have better ventilation so the patrons don’t have to smell algae during their visit. There’s a «bird atrium,» aka a cage with pretty but insanely loud squawking birds. You can hang out in there, feed them for like $ 3 and pray that they don’t crap on you. There’s also lots of reptiles.
The main petting tank is a substantial size, there are many sting rays that swim right up to the edge. I saw one leopard shark, I heard the cashier telling someone that a couple sharks died and they have the leopard shark left. There’s 1 – 2 smaller petting areas, one is a coral pond with water so shallow, fish are halfway above water when they’re swimming above coral. I think it was done intentionally so people are able to pet them but I was more disturbed and concerned.
We spent about 40 minutes and saw everything. Usually I can sit and watch fish for too long but I couldn’t stand the smell and there were a few too many fish that were just sunken and barely moving on the floor of the tank. Kids seemed to enjoy it and there are some really cool species of fish and coral though I think I saw more coral than sea animals.
Shitty? Hillariously yes. You might have to go see for yourself, but then you’ll be disappointed.

I’ve been reading all the reviews here since it opened and I got to say, Unilocal and other social networks, sometimes, bringing out the worst in people.
I checked out the Aquarium today and saw that kids were enjoying it. THEY WERE HAPPY!!! Didn’t see much negativity stuff as some reviewers pointed out. I went there all prepared to dislike this place, and that this place was going to sux big time but I was wrong and glad that I was wrong.
SUGG: Don’t expect to much out of your $ 10 (and buy one get one free). Just enjoy life…
SUGG 2: Don’t center everything around yourself and I promise, your life will be better.
SUGG 3: Bring kids here (don’t have one, borrow one), they will enjoy it, it’s not as big as other Aquarium or as fancy but hey, we got one.
SUGG 4: Be open minded! Fish is good… :)