West Indian Manatee

Is this the entire exhibit?!

@TinoPup there's a little bit more that can't be seen in the picture, but it's definitely not a very big exhibit. They have access to a second off-exhibit pool as well and I don't know how big that one is.

@Neil chace Yikes What was your overall feeling of the place? It gets very little attention anywhere.

@TinoPup well for starters, it's small. There's a total of fourteen tanks- five of which can only be seen from the queue area of "Turtle Talk w/ Crush"- a show designed for children where they can interact with a video of Crush from Finding Nemo (that has little educational value, and is a wasted opportunity for an interesting show). Those five tanks had moon jellies, some sort of small stingray, and some small fish of unknown species. Six of the other tanks were small, cylindrical floor to ceiling tanks- housing clownfish, Blue tang, some sort of eel, frogfish, and some kind of sea horse. None of these tanks I've mentioned had much in terms of signage- no species ID signs and only some small signs about camouflage and whatnot. The dolphin tank also had no signs, while the manatee tank had a little bit of signage, and the large Coral Reef Tank had rotating screens showing pictures with only a common name- no information. Overall, the aquarium is lacking- and I would not recommend paying theme park admission purely for this aquarium. Seeing manatees was nice, but both marine mammal exhibits are on the small size, and the large coral Reef Tank is nothing special- but certainly a nice tank. There were five sharks of four species, a loggerhead sea Turtle, a number of rays, and various standard Reef fish. While I would not recommend paying admission purely for this aquarium, it is a nice place to spend an hour or so if you plan to go to Epcot- which has plenty of other interesting attractions to explore.

@Neil chace Thanks for the review! Epcot was already extremely low on my list - if I were to go to one mostly theme park in the area, it would be Aquatica, for the commerson's - but I was still a bit curious because the aquarium never gets mentioned anywhere. It's now completely off my list

@TinoPup yeah, the aquarium definitely isn't worth a trip. It's extremely "Finding Nemo" focused, and certainly showing its age. Plus it's not like there're any species you can't find at plenty of other places. Frankly, I mainly went because of other members of my family- and was mainly interested in seeing Disney's Animal Kingdom and Animal Kingdom Lodge.

@Neil chace Understandable with family. On my trip (nearly two decades ago now, yikes) I was only there for 3 days, but with family, so I got to choose two options and then the other day we did Disney World. Can the lodge be visited without staying there?

@TinoPup yes. Parking is the only difficulty, as you need a reservation to park. However, it doesn't have to be a room reservation, dining reservations work as well. What we did was get a breakfast reservation at Boma (which was an amazing restaurant- fantastic food!) and then view the Savannah before and after our meal. If you weren't driving, you could take a Disney Bus to the lodge from the Transportation Center or one of the parks, but I'd recommend the route we took and get a dining reservation. The lodge is definitely expensive, hence us not staying at it! It's definitely a sight to see, however, and I'd highly recommend going. Spent about an hour looking at the savannas- and could've spent much longer if I wasn't pressed for time.

@Neil chace Awesome, I didn't know that! Were the food reservations difficult to get? I know Disney in general can be difficult with those. Yeah, staying there is well out of my price range lol, but they have steenbok and a few other uncommon species that I'd like to see.

@TinoPup my mother made the reservation so I'm not completely sure, but from my understanding it wasn't too difficult to get- especially if you do it a month out. I did not see any steenbok, but do know that they should have a few- would've definitely been cool to see! I did see some other really nice ungulates- my first lesser kudu, impala, eland, addax, waterbuck, and thompson's gazelle. I also saw a few Roan Antelope, which was nice, such a beautiful species and a personal favorite of mine!