Adventure Aquarium Events & Catering

My husband and I had chosen a very special date for our wedding... it turned out to be the day Hurricane Irene wreaked havoc on the Northeast. As you can imagine we were dealing with a fair amount of stress that day, however Adventure Aquarium went above and beyond to make sure that we still had a wonderful wedding day. The staff was very professional and made sure that despite the hurricane they were there to help us celebrate our day. Even though our reception had to be cut short, everything was perfect! All of our guests raved about the food and how amazing the venue was. Guests also told us that they were very impressed with how seamless the day went despite the fact Hurricane Irene (our unwanted guest) decided to pay us a visit. A huge thank you to Adventure Aquarium and all of the staff that went above and beyond during the stress of a hurricane to help us have a special day. It will definitely be a day that we will never forget!

Everything was perfect. Even more then I expected. The service was exceptional and the food delicious!

EXCELLENT venue & very attentive staff... (was New Jersey State Aqaurium at the time but form what I hear, weddings run simlilarly with new ownership) Beautiful location, sweepingf views of Philadelphia on Large terrace. Our wedding is talked about still... fun, fun, fun.... unique, lots of choices. We even had an educator on hand that walked around (not intrusively) to answer ANY questions guests had... we had the pet the shark tank open with a staff member. Hardly any kids at our wedding - 250 people (4 kids)... adults enjoyed more than children! The Children's Garden is outside of Aquarium and managed by a totally different organization, but this is where we had our first part of our cocktail hour and then moved guests through a dark tunnel of sea life with bars set up in the tunnel. Check it Out!!!!

The aquarium is absolutely beautiful. We had our wedding before their new party space (Currents) opened. We had the area around the big fish tank and outside balcony. The staff was very helpful, friendly and professional. All the guests said it was the best wedding they've ever been to!!

This was no question the place we wanted to have our wedding. With the amazing help of coordinator Chez, out dreams really came true. This venue is so unique and will have your guest raving about it for months! Everything was better then we could have expected and it truely was the best day of our lives! You have to check it...

This is truly a beautiful and unique venue that my guests will be talking about for years to come, and hopefully made for some killer shots! Via e-mail they were very responsive and answered all my questions, but the catering manager we were working with left 3 months before the wedding, so that was a little stressful, but other than that I was really please with the service and attention I received.

Great venue! It can be surprisingly elegant with little need for costly decorations because the stunning shark tank is the best eye catcher!

All staff was wonderful and extremely helpful. We received incredible compliments from our guests about how unique of a wedding it was!

We had a problem the day of the wedding! They had a rehersal going on when my husband got there (not early either, only 30 min before our wedding was suppossed to start). They also lost our menu 3 times and charged us for things they originally told us would be free.

All was well until I got to my reception! Guests were led through the ballroom to the cocktail hour, My guests were not suppose to see the ballroom until after the cocktail hour was over. This is because the aquarium staff (who were at the wedding) didn't have the key to open the other door, which the planner at the aquarium said would be how the guests would enter the cocktail hour. The ballroom was suppose to be a suprise! This is not at all how i thought a 25,000plus venue would be! I sent my place cards early to the aquarium and when I arrived (the bride) i had to put them in alphabetical order in my wedding dress!! We had cupcakes which cost about a $1,000 plus to have at our wedding. They were displayed on a table, very nicely, but when it came time for everyone to get a cupcake they were not handed out! We have 180 cupcakes. People were coming up the me (the bride) and asking if they were allowed to have a cupcake!! This was very heart breaking. My husband and I planned two years for this event! I would say spend you 40,000 plus moneys some where else! The planner at the aquarium who I will not name is really a great person she was really helpful, but she was not at my wedding. Some random person was that i had never met! She did not have the high cor compitences I expected for how much my husband and I paid.

I am the mother of the bride. I have taken several months to think about this review. I finally decided to write it as a word to the wise for future brides choosing to use this venue. While my daughter's wedding was beautiful, and most guests did not know about the problems, we encountered such a lack of professionalism and outright confusion that in the end Aramark (the company that runs the food service portion of the Aquarium) ended up refunding a substantial amount of money to us, thereby admitting culpability for the problems that made the wedding less than perfect. I am just thankful that while the entire ordeal was very stressful to me, most guests were not aware of all the mistakes that occurred. First of all, what went right? The Aquarium is a beautiful facility, the location on the waterfront is awesome and Currents ballroom with the wall of fish tanks is spectacular. For the purposes of simplicity I will list what went wrong. 1. The aquarium did not lock doors to the facility, so guests were wandering in and out while set up was occurring, totally unprofessional and really ruined the "wow" factor of seeing the tanks for the first time. 2. The maitre d' DID NOT SHOW UP, so NO ONE was in charge of our event. 3. Guests were supposed to be greeted at the door by staff with trays of wine, hors d'overes and signature cocktails. We paid extra for 3 additional "wine stewards" to perform this service. At 6PM when the guests arrived no servers were in sight. At 6:05 I had to go into the kitchen where the wait staff was HAVING A MEETING to tell them to come out. It was almost 6:15 before the trays were being passed. The mother of the bride should not have to track down the wait staff. 4. Table wine service was supposed to start as soon as the guests sat down. I had to flag a waiter down to ask them to start serving. Guests had to help themselves from tables set against the wall. My husband had to make his toast with a glass of water that I snatched off a table for him during his speech. 5. The food was not as presented at the tasting. In particular the caesar salad was horrible, lettuce from a bag with the dressing squirted (yes squirted) on the top, looking like it came from Eatin' Park, 6. The blinds in the cocktail area were not raised once the sun set, thereby blocking the view. I had to flag a waiter to get someone to raise them. We had specifically asked for them to be raised after the sunset, as what you are paying $150/person for is mainly the view. 7. The wedding cake was NEVER SERVED. The kitchen staff cut up a sheet cake we had as an "extra" cake in case we needed more than the wedding cake and grooms cake to serve the guests. I realized this at the end of the night when an entire wedding cake ($600) minus the one piece the bridal couple cut from it, and an entire grooms cake ($350) were loaded back into my car by the staff. I had to throw almost $1,000 worth of cake in the trash. And the guests were served tiny slivers of cake that looked like it came from the grocery store. 8. The three children (flower girls) were accidently served the appetizer of shrimp cocktail. When the servers realized the mistake they came to TAKE AWAY the shrimp cocktail as the children were eating them. The chicken fingers and fries that were the children's meals did not come with capsup. When it was requested, catsup packets were thrown, yes, thrown, on the table in front of them. Nice presentation. There were other problems, but these were the main ones. I would advise anyone using this facility to make sure you know who will be the Aramark respresentative overseeing your event. The coordinator who went over all our plans was not present that night, and the replacement just never showed up. These kinds of mistakes are not acceptable in a facility that holds weddings/events every weekend. So while many of the reviews about the aquarium are quite good, just be aware that mistakes happen and you need to be very careful about who is going to be responsible for the success or failure of your particular event.