GA Aquarium offers sleepovers and other new features

from the Orlando Sentinel (8/31):

Georgia's aquatic gem ups its awe
Selwyn Crawford
The Dallas Morning News
August 31, 2008
ATLANTA

"At the Georgia Aquarium in downtown Atlanta, you can sleep with the fishes and live to talk about it.

In fact, the folks at the world's largest fish tank want you to. They have a lot of new things happening at the 8-million-gallon facility, which opened in November 2005.

And none of those things even includes the 1.3-million-gallon, $110-million dolphin exhibit that will break ground this summer. That exhibit, to open in November 2010, will house bottlenose dolphins.

But the new things you can see now at the aquarium begin, appropriately, at its beginning. A 1,600-square-foot mural on the ceiling greets visitors at the entrance and leads them into the facility's main atrium. The mural, painted by Italian artist Silvio Irilli, was unveiled in June" ...

"If you thought that the comment about sleeping with the fishes was just a figure of speech, it wasn't. For $100, kids get to spend designated nights at the aquarium, where they get dinner, a snack and breakfast the next morning. And they also get an extensive behind-the-scenes look at what makes the aquarium tick.

And soon, adults will get sleepovers, too, aquarium officials said. In the meantime, the over-18 crowd can take advantage of another new happening: live jazz on Friday nights with food and adult beverages.

But the new experiences don't stop there. For $290 (less for aquarium members), visitors who are certified scuba divers may swim with the whale sharks -- and the other animals in the 6.3 million-gallon tank -- for about 30 minutes." ...

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