GA Aquarium & World of Coke

Having tired of doing the normal things around our area, I asked for "City Pass" tickets for the boys and myself. This gives you entrance into 6 Atlanta attractions for a fraction of the cost of admission to them all individually. (Just google "Atlanta City Pass" and you'll get all the info you could possibly want...maybe other big cities do it, too, who knows). Anyway, today the boys and I adventured out to the GA Aquarium and the World of Coke...considered CNN as well, but that would have been overkill for all 3 of us. What's nice is that you get to go to both places (or all 3 if you choose) with only paying parking once. However, they may say you get into shorter lines, but don't believe them...you have to go to the will call line (GA) or the general ticket line (WOC) still to redeem the actual ticket for admission. It was an okay day for the lines today, thankfully.
We've been to the aquarium before...this was our 4th visit. (Still like Tennessee Aquarium better, but this one's more convenient). :) Our tickets today gave us an extra bonus in that we were able to see the 4D movie starring Deepo and his friends and get a "behind the scenes" tour. Neither of which we have experienced on our previous visits...movie was cute...the tour left something to be desired.

Ever since my first visit to the largest aquarium ever, I've been wondering how they came up with their fish's name, "Deepo". Thought it cute since he's orange and sweet like his counterpart "Nemo"...catchy way to keep a name simple and rhyming with another popular cartoon fish, right? Well, finally today while sitting in the auditorium awaiting the beginning of the movie it hit me. "Deepo" doesn't have anything to do with "Nemo" but has everything to do with the fact that the aquarium was a gift to Atlanta from the co-founder of The Home DEPOT. Quite amused that I finally figured it out, I've been laughing at myself all day about my lightbulb finally glowing with all 100 watts. In the movie itself, a line hits it out of the park...Deepo is asked by his new friend, "This is your home, Deepo?" Quite a tag line for the old Home Depot, wouldn't you say? (The Home Depot is considered a competitor of our business, btw...still shop there on occassion, however).

The thing that excited me the most this trip was the frogs. Haven't ever noticed them before for some reason. They are in a little exhibit in the River Scout area. This one little purple frog looked just like the plastic ones kids play with...in fact, I was questioning his realness until he moved. It was so cool to see all the vivid colors in real life as opposed to just on tv...greens, blues, black and white, purples...They realy are brightly colored! It was something...pictures didn't do them justice, really.

The boys liked the elephant nose fish and the whale sharks. I liked the frogs. Pretty cool all around...and I enjoyed seeing something new among all the things that I remembered from previous visits.

After several hours walking around in circles in the aquarium (if you go there you'll know I'm serious about that), we make our way outside for a short walk to the World of Coke. Now, having been there myself once about 7 years ago, I knew one thing for sure...lots of flavors were just waiting to be tasted. The boys were so excited that they were finally free to drink all the pop they wanted...that's "Coke" to you southerners and "soda" to you others not from the midwest. :) It was nice to see the new "World of Coke"...much brighter and more colorful than I remember the old one being. Cudos to the designer! (We sold alot of rebar for that job, too!)

Entering the museum, the boys had one thing on their minds. Tasting the different flavors of Coke was the only thing they wanted to do. It took every ounce of the patience to sit through the preliminary introductions and such to get to the self guided tour. I can't say we saw all that the World of Coke had to offer, but that's okay. They liked seeing the bottling process so I considered that a successful part of our tour and we went on in to the tasting area.

Watching the boys sipping soda pop from different countries was priceless. Timmy had a pop mustache that made me smile. Alex was all about tasting each and every one of them. We had a good time together. I'm not for sure how many of those flavors had caffeine in them, but for a one time event I guess it didn't really matter. They sure were tasty. I didn't taste as many as the boys did...tried many flavors of Fanta though, because those are usually safe. :) Alex liked getting to the North American stand, however, where his favorites were. The rootbeer had run out of syrup, though, and before I knew it he was sipping straight CO2 which put an awful taste in his mouth of course. I tried to explain it to him...he just went on and tried something else without skipping a beat. They were stuffed with bubbles and bubbles of carbonation by the time we left. One of their favorite things was getting their own bottle of Coke to bring home with them.

Don't know where we'll venture to next...we have 9 days to visit the rest of our attractions. Seems like alot, but it has already been worth it's cost. A day of memories not soon to be forgotten.