By David Israel, Business Manager
As I, and other "Scoopers," have said many times before "Chattanooga is a great place to live and play." Our claims are backed up once again by TripAdvisor.com - the world's largest travel community as reported by the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Our own Tennessee Aquarium was just ranked No. 2 on their just released Top 10 U.S. Aquariums list. I must say that this is no surprise to me at all as I've been to two of the top 3 and have always asserted that our Aquarium is my clear favorite.
Below is the TripAdvisor's Top 10 U.S. Aquariums:
1. Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies, Gatlinburg, TN
2. Tennessee Aquarium, Chattanooga
3. Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey, Calif
4. Ripley's Aquarium, Myrtle Beach, S.C.
5. Oregon Coast Aquarium, Newport, Ore
6. Dallas World Aquarium, Dallas
7. National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium, Dubuque, Iowa
8. Shedd Aquarium, Chicago
9. Downtown Aquarium, Denver
10. Florida Aquarium, Tampa, FL
My wife and I spent some time at the Monterey Bay Aquarium on our honeymoon and thought it was a beautiful place to visit with incredible window views of our ocean. We've also recently visited the Georgia Aquarium and was not as excited about our visit as we have been about our own Tennessee Aquarium - the new Georgia Aquarium is the largest in the U.S. and didn't even make the list.
The release on Thursday was the first time since its launch in 2000 that TripAdvisor.com ranked aquariums. The site gets 24 million monthly unique viewers and its pages have gathered more than 15 million reviews and opinions according to Brooke Ferencsik, a TripAdvisor spokesperson.
With all that is happening in Chattanooga these days, I would not be surprised if our "Scenic City" ends up on more and more lists of great places to travel, live, work and play. As a member of the Tennessee Aquarium, we spend a lot of time during the year visiting both buildings of the Tennessee Aquarium. The first building is the "River Journey" - our favorite. The newest building is the "Ocean Journey" which has beautiful exhibits and an incredible ocean coral reef.
When we first came to visit Chattanooga in 2003 we paid for admission and enjoyed ourselves immensely; when we moved, our admission was credited to our membership. We have been members ever since and support the Aquarium every year. They offer their members unique opportunities to spend time after hours at private parties or to go on adventures and excursions with other members. Our membership has paid for itself over and over. We take visiting friends and family from out of town; it is a must see stop on a Chattanooga visit. My wife also will go for an hour in between appointments to visit the turtle exhibit since we have our own turtle we can help the volunteers answer questions.
Thank you TripAdviser.com for telling the world what we already know - The Scenic City has it all. We are so proud of our Tennessee Aquarium. Come visit us soon; you won't regret it.
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