Scarborough Sea Life Sanctuary

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We were invited to Scarborough Sea Life Sanctuary and it was a lovely day out for families. They have penguins as well as Fish and it is right on the seafront. Ideal for a family day out on the Yorkshire coast.  We visited with a two and three year old and also a teen during the summer holidays. 

I have visited Scarborough so many times but have never visited the Sea Life Sanctuary before. Scarborough is around two hours away from Newcastle, so just the right amount of time for a day trip with little ones. The Sea Life Centre is located in the North Bay, right on the seafront and close to the town centre. There was plenty of parking in the car park and there is also a regular bus that runs from Scarborough and drops you right outside of the centre. 

We visited at the end of the summer holidays on a weekday and it was really busy, there were queues out of the door but we did not have to wait long to get in. We visited as a family so we had both of our toddlers - aged just turned two and three and our teen with us. When you enter you are asked to leave pushchairs in the buggy bay at the entrance near the tills, so keep this in mind when you visit.

We entered the centre and came across a big tank full of stingrays. A lot of the tanks have big windows that are low enough for little ones to look in themselves, there was also a lot of areas where children could get a closer look at the fish too. There were lots of tanks of fish as you walked through the centre and my girls were amazed when they found a tank with Dory, Nemo, and Marlin in. 

The jellyfish displays were amazing, the room was dark and the jellyfish were in colour changing tanks, which looked rather beautiful. It was so mesmerising to watch the jellyfish. 

Penguin Rock is located outdoors and this was the highlight of my son's visit, you can actually walk through the enclosure. They have keepers in the enclosure to keep an eye on the penguins and to talk to you about the penguins. 

The Sea Life Sanctuary is also home to a Seal hospital, a few seals were in the hospital when we visited. Once the seals have been nursed back to health they are then realised back into the wild. They also have a big outdoor pool with five resident seals in who were swimming around in the water.

We then headed to the ocean tunnel, this was definitely one of the highlights of my three-year old's day as she was amazed to see sharks, giant turtles, and so many different fish swim over her head and on either side of her. She also enjoyed seeing the turtles. 

We noticed a cafe and a coffee shop during the visit, both were really busy when we visited so we did not try them out this time. I was pleased to see that the gift shop was not too expensive, a little soft toy penguin was £6 and a turtle soft toy was £10. As well as having a huge selection of soft toys in the gift shop there was also lots of small pocket money toys, sweets, and gifts. 

We really enjoyed the visit to Scarborough Sea Life Sanctuary, however, it was really busy on the day we visited so we did not spend as much time there as we would have liked.  If you are looking for a family day out or a day out with toddlers near North Yorkshire then I really do recommend the Sea Life Sanctuary as we all really enjoyed it, especially my two toddlers.

To find out more info, book tickets or check opening times please visit the official Scarborough Sea Life Website