The Georgia Aquarium is fantastic. Without a doubt the Open Ocean display which features Whale Sharks (the largest fish in the world) is the absolute highlight of the Aquarium. There have been two whale sharks die at the aquarium so they still have some challenges regarding the best habitat for them it is truly amazing to see a huge fish swim past. There are several other very nice exhibits including beluga whale and a very nice Amazon basin exhibit.
You should also be aware that the Georgia Aquarium is VERY VERY crowded. This means that on weekends and holidays you are likely to be shoulder to shoulder with other visitors being herded through the exhibits in an endless slow moving school of tourists. The aquarium attempts to moderate these lines by selling a limited number of tickets for each specific entry time. As a result if you are planning to visit on a weekend or holiday plan on buying your tickets online ahead of time or else you may get there and have a several hour wait (5 or 6) to get in. Even with the limited ticket sales the aquarium is generally over crowded to the point of frustration. One suggestion would be to try and schedule your visit to the aquarium on a week day morning first thing when the building opens you can see all or most of the exhibits before it gets busy.

...the reality of the Georgia Aquarium. It is perhaps one of the greatest, textbook examples of large scale, extremely high-dollar ergonomic design failure in modern America.

Over and over the working phrase for the Georgia Aquarium is: "Compulsory Pedestrian Collision Zone". Throughout the Aquarium forced pedestrian collisions are unavoidable - it is as if the visitors to the aquarium are in some type of pinball machine. There are multiple examples of poor design such as places where a huge crowd will back-up to stand-still because people are afraid to turn a darkened corner - yet, when the corner is finally turned there are multiple open spaces on the other side of the dark corner. It isn't that crowds specifically are the problem, this facility would be crowded with a couple hundred people due to the incredibly poor design. It is a designer's nightmare and the visitors suffer.

Regarding the exhibits, the feel is unfortunately "Disney-fied" and not oriented toward education and not oriented toward science. Signs and descriptions of displays are small and simplistic and everything has the feel that it was conceived for pre-schoolers. Personally, we would suggest losing some of the "Disney" or "kiddie" feel and offering a bit more for all those who are not still in diapers. With many Imax movies having been created about the sea, the facility theater offers not an Imax like experience but a ridiculous repeating show of singing cartoon fish.

The Aquarium was a great idea and we salute the effort. However, it is time for the Aquarium to close the doors for a few days while architects and engineers review and revamp everything related to pedestrian movement and if we're lucky lose the Toys-are-Us feel and create offerings for visitors that are actually interested in the sea.

We have been to aquariums across America and this was a significant and expensive disappointment.

We live in the Atlanta area and waited many months to visit the Georgia Aquarium in order to let the crowds "die down." Unfortunately, a couple hundred people would be a crowd that this venue is unprepared to manage. Lines everywhere were chaotic and unorganized. Signage was almost nonexistent. Staff were uninformed and unaware of what was happening from area to area in the aquarium. While walking into the Aquarium, the only way we could find the actual entrance was happening to see someone screaming and waving his hands from across a crowded terrace. Unbelievably poor to non-existent traffic management was the rule. To top it off, there's little to see, and few ways to adequately see what there is. For a place that is touted as having the largest tank in the universe, there were only three or four viewing areas about the size of our bedroom wall, along with one larger viewing area that was a chaotic throw-down of humanity. The "Georgia habitat" was horrifically absent anything of interest -- just a couple of shallow tanks with horseshoe crabs and stingrays. Some of the habitats were cramped, and one sea otter looked as if it had gone psychotic from the numbness of circling a tiny enclosure endlessly. We are seasoned travelers who have been around the world, and who have seen many excellent aquariums. We wanted to see this one without prejudice, but found the experience annoying and exhausting. Despite fighting turbulent crowds, we felt we were able to see the entire aquarium in about 90 minutes. We both commented repeatedly about how much better many of the other -- even much smaller -- aquariums we have visited are. We can't recommend this for anyone -- an exercise in chaos.

Visited the aquarium 11/16/07 and I highly recommend. Before you go, visit the aquarium website ([--]) to download the audio tour for iPods or MP3 players. There is a podcast for each of the aquarium galleries. They give you facts about the animals, which you would not get otherwise. "It's really cool."