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REVIEW: The Little Mermaid Experience

In the spur of the moment, we had purchased two tickets to the Little Mermaid Experience at Sydney SeaLife aquarium and while it sounded incredible, it was somehow very mediocre....

Casey Matthews
March 14, 2022

In the spur of the moment, we had purchased two tickets to the Little Mermaid Experience at Sydney SeaLife aquarium and while it sounded incredible, it was somehow very mediocre. Fortunately, it was only showing for three nights so if you missed out, consider yourself lucky.

The night started out with all of us mingling in the main entrance to the SeaLife Aquarium and you could already tell it was a bit off. Once everyone was in, the doors opened, and we all started shuffling in. We were greeted with our first cocktail of the night which was a mix of gin, lime and what tasted like mint but before we could take our first sip they had to spray it with ginger. I’ve, personally, never experienced anything like that before and I used to make cocktails!

After we could take our first sip, it was a little disappointing. It tasted really weak, and the flavours were just a bit of an odd mix. But we did get to enjoy the views of the coral while we ignored the non-alcoholic cocktails. Seeing the SeaLife at night definitely has a different experience to it, a lot of the animals are more active at night so it was really amazing to see how they move when there’s not a huge crowd of people around or little children tapping on the glass.

Our favourite part was definitely the jellyfish, I enjoyed it so much that I kept coming back to it. I have an unusual obsession with jellyfish so I really enjoyed watching them blob around. After Rob pulled me away from the jellyfish, we entered the main part of the aquarium where they had set up some tables and chairs for everyone to sit and enjoy the sea-life swimming around right in front of them. We walked around the entire main aquarium, which is massive if you haven’t been, before finally stopping at the glass tunnel where the leopard sharks and sea turtles swam right above you. Like I said, seeing the see-life come alive at night was probably the best part of the experience.

Now onto the not-so-great part.

The performance itself was a bit tacky and cringey in my opinion. It was a take on the book of the Little Mermaid rather than the movie but I haven’t read the book so I can’t confirm whether it was accurate or not. It didn’t seem like it was, but I could be wrong. While it was the same baseline story of the whole selling your soul for legs, the songs they chose were just all wrong and did not do anything for the performance. From Beyoncé’s Single Ladies, Lana Del Ray’s Young and Beautiful to a mix of QUEEN and other random artists, the whole performance just seemed all over the place that you actually forgot what the performance was about.

Once the performance was almost over, I decided to head back to the jellyfish to regain my lost mood.

Besides the performance and the tragic songs, everything else about the night was quite pleasant. Seeing the animals after hours was probably the most exciting part about it, it made the night a lot more enjoyable and made the performance a little less disappointing. So if anything, try to get into the Aquarium after hours.

For more like this, check out what we thought of the Australian Ballet’s Celebration Gala!