VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — Walking through the Virginia Aquarium will look just a little different for the time being.
Right now, only members are allowed in, but in just a few days, they’ll reopen to the public. Instead of coming right inside, visitors have to buy their tickets online and pick a time slot to come in.
“In addition, we have only 100 people per half an hour that will be entering, so it will be very limited,” said Executive Director Cynthia Spanoulis.
Spanoulis says it’s all for safety.
“So if you do come, it’s going to be really exciting because you’ll pretty much have the aquarium all to yourself. It’s like a behind -the-scenes [experience] because there will be so few people that will be in there,” she said.
They have added markers on the floor to remind people to stay socially distant, and they also increased sanitation.
“In addition between 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. each day, we won’t sell or allow members in at the time so we’ll do an additional deep cleaning,” she said.
There’s one-way traffic through the aquarium and some of the touch tanks are temporarily closed. One family visiting from Kentucky talked about their experience.
“We’re from out of town, so we actually bought a membership just so we could come in. We were here Monday as well and she hasn’t stopped talking about it since Monday, so my wife loves sea turtles, so it was great,” said visitor Scott Hrebicik.
Spanoulis says they are fortunate because a lot of zoos and aquariums around the country opened before them, so they were able to learn best practices.
Read more by visiting the Virginia Aquarium’s website.
