Going anywhere with three kids can be a delightful and wonderful experience. I’m saying that with a HIGH dose of sarcasm. If you have three kids you probably know where I’m coming from, but we recently went on a little trip to Sea Life in Weymouth and this is our experience.
Is it worth visiting Sea Life with three kids?
I’ll be honest, the only reason we really went to Sea Life was because we have the Merlin annual passes. If we didn’t have them, then this little trip would’ve cost us around £63. To be fair, that’s going rate – if not slightly cheaper – than 99% of days out theses days. If you can get into an attraction as a family of five for under £80 then you’ve either got yourself a good deal or you’ve stolen something.
BUT… we did manage to spend the best part of four hours there and we totally could’ve stayed longer if it hadn’t have been for TWO things:
- The parking at Sea Life really irritated me.
- Our kids can be a little bit of a “nightmare” sometimes.
Does Weymouth Sea Life Centre have parking?
So to answer this question I’ll simply say YES. Kind of. The parking is run by the Dorset council and by the looks of it they absolutely LOVE shafting people. Between the 1st of April and the 31st of October – you know, the time period where I dare say most people visit – they wanna charge you £7.50 if you fancy parking for 4 hours. What’s that? You might want to stay longer? Oh yeah, that’s £15 then.
It’s a bloody stupid parking charge because we were there for about 3.5 hours. You could EASILY spend longer there if you fancied it. We missed the otters, the exhibits around the Splash Park, and I even missed the turtles, but that’s a different matter.
But not just that, you could park there and then wander around the beachfront or visit other attractions in the area. You know, things that would actually help the local businesses that the council surely want to support? But nah, £15 if you wanna park here most the day.
How long do you need at Sea Life Weymouth?
As mentioned above, we were there for under 4 hours. To be fair, that’s all you really need if you actually go around and see everything. The places you’ll likely spend the most time if you have 3 young kids is probably the park – which has a cafe and toilet right next to it – or the Splash Park. Maybe not the latter if it’s a cold miserable day. Luckily for us it was July – not that that means much these days.
I would recommend bringing your own food – which I recommend for almost everywhere you could possibly visit – but prices weren’t mental. It was £7 for a meal deal that consisted of a sandwich or hot dog, plus a snack and drink. I wouldn’t pay that in Tesco, but for an attraction it’s alright. And the kids lunch box was £5.25.
We still brought sandwiches though. But other Merlin attractions – Legoland I’m looking at you, you filthy rip-off bastards – have MUCH higher prices. If you’re a baller, or have mad spare cash for when you go on days out, then yeah, don’t bothered with sandwiches, just buy stuff.
I dare see someone wheeling around a cooler box, which is some next level stuff. They even had coleslaw. They literally brought a bloody picnic, which is quality stuff in fairness.
What animals are at Sea Life?
This might shock you, but you’ll mostly find fish type animals at Sea Life. You know, white ones, yellow ones, the ones from Finding Nemo probably pop up somewhere. Everywhere has a bloody clown fish these days.
You’ve got seals – which aren’t the barking loud ones from California – penguins, little sea dragon things, and I’ve heard they had turtles, but you already know I missed seeing them.
There’s some cool photos of the animals for you.
So yeah, I think that’s about it.
I guess I’d kinda recommend going, especially if you have the Merlin passes or you can get it on a deal. Just do me a favour and email Dorset council and call them money grabbing arse bandits.
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