Houston Interactive Aquarium & Animal Preserve

Came to visit from Oklahoma and we took my little nephews. They loved it and the adults enjoyed it as well. The staff there are wonderful and the animals seemed to be pretty well-kept. I used to study zoology, an exotic animal keeper myself, and told my brother how I’d love to work there if I lived in Houston. I would highly recommend this place for anyone who loves animals and wants to spend time with family, especially children. My family will definitely visit again in the future.

This place is so cool. If you are in the area buying the season pass could be worth it as it pays for itself in 2 visits. The one day ticket is not a bad price either with all the animals you get to interact without having to pay extra. They have lots of animals encounters you can add on or add feeding which are also well worth the price. I had so much fun and will for sure be back. The animal staff is super friendly and knowledgeable.

This place is awesome! We had a lot of fun here. We stayed there for almost 4 hours. We did a lot. It’s definitely worth it! Trust me! You definitely want to visit this place at least once in your life. We mostly were having a lot of fun feeding the sting rays. We loved how the staff showed us a lot of the birds. They did tricks for us and we were able to hold them. It was an amazing experience.

Our kids got memberships as a Christmas present so this was our first time visiting. The parking situation outside seems to be temporary as half the parking lot was roped off for tree removal, so hopefully that’s going to end up with a larger parking area, but we came super early so we found a spot no problem. Another parking lot next to the museum was charging $5 to park there, if you come late and can’t find a free spot. The best thing about this place is the kids are encouraged to touch (almost) everything. Obvious exceptions being things like jellyfish and several animals will stay at the bottom of the tank if they don’t want to be touched but my kids loved being able to pet 90% of the critters. The negative is that a large portion of the really fun animals can only be touched after paying for more credits, and there are age restrictions on who can do certain animal encounters. 8 seems to be the magic age where you can do all of them except one of the lemur species which is 14+. The snakes have to be brought out by handlers in order to touch them which was understandable but my kids had a hard time waiting, so try to time your visit to their tank with 11:30 if possible. Some various characters were making the rounds including the Grinch and Belle. My only bummer was the gift shop selection. It’s obviously geared toward young kids and toy-centric, but I hope that in time they branch out into other popular traditional souvenirs like vinyl stickers and iron on patches. I also wish the magnets had options that just included the logo and not individual names. Most magnets without a name said things like #1 mom or best grandpa or something, but I wanted a blank one with the little animals logo and it wasn’t there. They had other lenticular magnets and postcards but I was bummed I couldn’t get the little logo ones since my kids names weren’t on there.

Incredible experience at the Houston Interactive Aquarium. Didn't understand what the card/credits were for until my friends and I were a quarter through. Great place to take kids for something to do, can learn a lot while having fun. A little run down, but otherwise well taken care of. Fish are eager to be fed by the guests, and the staff employed there seem to be super knowledgeable. Highly recommend a visit here, would give more than 5 stars if I could.