Time to gear up. The bag full of toys is packed, apple juice is in hand, and surprisingly the children are strapped into their car seats. The family is finally ready to take a trip to the new aquarium. It isn't just any ordinary aquarium where you notice a couple of goldfish swimming around a tank with the title "rare Yellowtail Grouper." Nope, not even close -- this is the Odysea. An aquarium where seals, sharks, and sea turtles flourish in a vibrant reef created by the Odysea team. Opening its doors fairly recently within Arizona, the Odysea aquarium has brought an intriguing attraction to the barren desert that clearly captured wide populism. Everyone is obsessed with the Odysea because seals in the desert is almost unheard of. However, is the Odysea as amazing as its advertisements claim? Will you walk away from the aquarium just dying to revisit?

In my experience, this was not the case. There were so many aspects of the Odysea that I grew to detest throughout my entire visit. Now, as a disclaimer its only fair to mention that I am extremely bias toward marine wildlife conservation and saving the ocean. However, I prevented myself from automatically obtaining these negative, presuppositional opinions prior to giving this Odysea adventure a chance. I decided to give the aquarium the benefit of the doubt but surely I was disappointed. Throughout the visit, I noticed several factors that simply made my heart hurt.

Prior to even entering, I was welcomed with open arms if I paid the $35 for my ticket, which was including the $5 student discount. Thank you Odysea for that $5 dollars, I appreciate you taking such a dip in profits for a broke college student. I try not to complain about prices but when I'm considering selling my organs on the black market to pay my student loans, I don't want to spend $35 to see some fish swim in a dingy tank. Honestly the price didn't seem practical, especially after seeing what I paid for.

Once I began this hyped up journey, it was interesting. The aquarium had these unique fish from all over the world, one exhibit had miniature alligators and another had manta rays. When it came time to see the seals, sharks, and sea turtles (what I was looking forward to), I was sitting in a rotating theater that turned to each exhibit. I didn't like that you only had a few minutes to look at the creatures before it rotated to another exhibit. However, it was within this theater that I realized the Odysea's downfall. The animals were majestic; however, their conditions were horrific. Swimming around in dingy water and very tiny tanks, the seals looked purely miserable. They were swimming in these exact circles, like they were being coerced into making an appearance for the paying customers and whining toddlers. Their depressing, black eyes stared into your soul like a Sarah McLachlan commercial.

Lastly, the one aspect that truly disturbed me was a conversation I had with one of the cafeteria workers just simply making small talk. There is a 'touching pool' in the cafeteria that was housing starfish, sea cucumbers, smaller fish, etc. In the pool, I could count the number of starfish on one hand -- it was completely empty. Talking to the employee, I discovered that when the Odysea first opened the touching pool was filled to the brim with sea creatures. Like I said, the Odysea has only been open for mere months and the employee said all these animals had already died.All of this was an eye-opener. It was an eye-opener that showed maybe this kind of aquarium isn't meant for the desert. The desert doesn't foster the type of environment suitable for these creatures; it isn't fair we force them to endure heinous conditions for human entertainment. It's simply selfish. Travel to the ocean, we are 5 hours away from San Diego. At least we gave it a try, but we discovered that the Odysea is proving to be more detrimental than entertaining. These animals belong in the ocean, not in a glass tank plastered with fingerprints. Next time, think about the Odysea and if it's truly worth attending.