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Shane_Currie

Picture: Ocean Park

Located between Aberdeen Harbour and Repulse Bay is Ocean Park. This somewhat disjointed theme park is worth a visit if only to see the "Mr Squid" food stand! Ocean Park is a fairly large park made more so by the fact it is spread out over both sides of a rather large mountain, connected by a cable car.

By far the biggest attraction on the lower side, and perhaps the whole park, is the Panda Bear exhibit, and I think they know it as it is by far the best maintained and presented display in the park. There are three Panda Bears in the enclosure 2 females and 1 male. They are fairly inactive spending a lot of their time sleeping. We were however luckily enough to see one of the females sitting down for lunch. As if aware she was the centre of attention she sat looking directly at the crowd of enthralled onlookers. Seriously how cute are these guys?

We could have sat there for hours watching her eat her bamboo leaves. They certainly have a routine in the way they eat their food, obviously preferring the lower shoots they methodically collect 10 or so in their mouth before discarding the stems and munching away on their mouthful.

What makes them sooo cute; apart from their big black eyes and cuddly furriness? The way their ears move while they chew of course!! Back and forth synchronised with their chewing motion.

The rest of the lower mountain is taken up by amusements, so we made our way to the cable car for the trip to the backside of the mountain where the aquatic displays are housed.

Now we've been to a few aquarium on our travels, from the biggest eg. San Diego, to some of the smallest eg. Guam. Ocean Park is closer to the Guam end of the scale than it is to the San Diego end, however it is still worth a look.

What it lacks in size it does come close to making up for in quantity and diversity; they pack the tanks with every conceivable fish species. The wildlife displays include;

1. Shark Aquarium
2. Atoll Reef
3. Sea Jelly Spectacular
4. Pacific Pier - Sea lion and Seal display
5. Bird House

The dolphin show was a little disappointing though. It was almost as if they were doing a training session; the handlers had to give the commands several times on some occasions. However the sea lion was clever.

There were a couple of rides on the backside which helped make it more of a theme park than simply an Aquarium;

1. The Dragon - a rollercoaster
2. Ocean Park Tower
3. Ferris wheel
4. Crazy Galleon
5. Raging River
6. Eagle
7. The Abyss

For HK250 per adult a day at Ocean Park is a day will spent. Perhaps the only criticism is how spread out the park is which makes getting around a little painful.

Ocean Park Gallery

                            Click here to view the Ocean Park Picture Gallery