text: On one hand the Sea Life Aquarium is an aquarium If you have seen one you have seen this one On the other hand it is in a mall That is right An aquarium in a mall I mean Concord Mills is not your typical mall so what did you expect The attraction they say that a lot is run by a group that has a few of these this is apparently the sixth in the US and there are another couple of dozen scattered around Europe So you may have seen them elsewhere but this is the first in the area The closest in the US is halfway across the country so there is thatnnFirst you buy your ticket It is not cheap though you can save a few bucks if you buy online or if you buy an annual pass if you want to go a lot Expect to spend a good percentage of if you have a family of four and well more than that if you hit up the souvenir shop on the way outnnOn the way in it is not unlike a Disney attraction you get a little countdown timer and cute animation and everything Only the images are not centered properly so the porthole of your sub is not exactly where it should be Ignore that and pretend the room is moving so you actually feel like you are in a submarine so that when the doors open you feel like you have moved when in reality you have gone nowhere A bit more money in this department would do wonders Even a visit to a Disney property would help explain why it is needednnRegardless you then enter a cavelike aquarium and the fish are not bad They say there are thousands of them and there could be But there are not a huge variety If you have been to the NC aquariums you have seen otters and beluga whales and all sorts of wildlife Not here Just a bunch of fish Even the touch tank only has a few starfish and some hermit crabs admittedly they are big hermit crabs But you can see a bunch of those at Wings when you visit Myrtle Beach it does not cost you anything you can get your favorite team painted on the she will and if it dies you can usually get a free replacementnnThere are a couple of nice displays the horseshoe crabs are perhaps the most active I have seen anywhere and they do not look dead like they often do The rays swim rather than burying themselves The blacklight display of jellyfish is cool to look at but you can see things like that in Spencer Gifts at least I assume you can perhaps I am dating myself And the sea horses are always fun to watch Perhaps the best display is near the end where you can walk through a tunnel and see the head of Poseidon attached to some tentacles in some strange mythological mashup Most of the sharks were hanging out here including the only hammerhead I saw the whole timennOne word of caution The displays say not to use flash which is fine because it usually reflects off the tanks In fact all of the plexiglass reflects horribly so you get exit signs display signs and the lady from Waukegan in your pictures Try and take one looking up in the glass tunnel and you will get nothing but LED lights and no detail on the fish because the lights are above you in other words pictures are almost a nogo here But it is a reasonably interesting halfhour especially if you have little onesnnThats right I said halfhour While it is a big place for the mall it is not a big aquarium You can stay about as long as you want and you can cut through at the end to go back around again and again but you probably will not stay very long overall Keep that in mind and understand what you are paying and you will be fine