My husband recently had a training trip in Duluth, GA, which gave us a chance to tour a bit of Atlanta. Honestly, I can’t believe how many photos I’ve included in this post, but there was just so much to see and do in this bustling city! For every place we went, there are at least three other exciting places to visit. So… without further ado, we track back through our quick, five-day visit to Atlanta.
Downtown Atlanta
After watching the short movie Moments of Happiness in the Coca-Cola Theatre, we ventured into the hub, which led to:
- A meeting with the Coca-Cola Polar Bear
- a trip through The Vault, where the secret formula for Coca-Cola is supposedly locked away. (Is it really there?!?)
- a walk along the Milestones of Refreshment, which displays the fascinating stories behind the history of Coca-Cola
- a behind-the-scenes look at the bottling process in Bottle Works
- a 4-D Theater where we enjoyed a silly multi-sensory movie experience
- the Pop Culture Gallery where we could find all sorts of interesting trash-to-treasure creations in addition to the Norman Rockwell & Coca-Cola exhibit.
- the Perfect Pauses Theater, where we enjoyed watching Coca-Cola advertising from days of old
- and the Taste It! Room with over 100 different Coca-Cola drink options from across the globe.
Little did I know that we would review geography as a result of touring the World of Coca-Cola! Word of warning: Whatever you do, do NOT drink the Beverly from Italy. (You also might want to skip out on the beverage from Tanzania, although I can’t quite remember what the name of it was.)
After all those different drink options, Levi decided he liked plain Dasani water best of all.
Georgia Aquarium. The Georgia Aquarium is located next to World of Coca-Cola, so we decided to visit both in the same day!
The Aquarium offers several different galleries for the exploration of sea life:
- Cold Water Quest, where we learned about beluga whales, experienced African penguins, and watched sea dragons floating amongst aquatic plant life.
- Georgia Explorer was probably our children’s favorite exhibit due to the touch pools full of sea stars, stingrays, and horseshoe crabs. They also enjoyed telling jokes to Deepo at the Deepo Chat Room, an interactive 3D show.
- Ocean Voyager, where we witnessed whale sharks (the largest fish species in the world) and manta rays along with other fish, sharks, and stingrays in a six-million gallon exhibit with over 4,500 square feet of viewing windows. This is the only aquarium in the nation with manta rays and is a major highlight of the Georgia Aquarium.
- River Scout, where we observed freshwater creatures from rivers in Georgia, as well as Africa, South America, and Asia. Two highlights from this exhibit included the albino alligators and the piranhas!
- Tropical Diver. Here we were mesmerized by the garden eels, seahorses, jellyfish, and colorful reef fish. Definitely some unique aquatic life, some of which I had never seen before!
The Georgia Aquarium currently has an amazing Sea Monsters Revealed: Aquatic Bodies exhibit, which includes the world’s largest plastinated sea creatures. It was an extraordinary look inside some of the largest sea creatures, including a sunfish, devil ray, mako shark, and whale shark.
In addition to invertebrates, ocean floor, and ocean zones, we came across so many opportunities to review our memory work as we strolled through the exhibits: Carl Linnaeus and the classification of living things, parts of the food chain, and a whole bunch of references to body systems, albeit aquatic bodies. Nevertheless, it gave us a chance to review our human anatomy memory work!
We wrapped up our visit to the aquarium with the Dolphin Tales Show, a musical theatrical performance featuring the incredible talents of some dynamite dolphins! Dolphin Tales is included in Aquarium general admission, but a reservation is recommended.
“The show incorporates the beauty and agility of dolphins, live human actors, dramatic costuming and amazing effects. This memorable story is narrated by the StarSpinner, a mysterious seafaring adventurer who leads the way through an interactive journey across the oceans and through an epic battle against villains of the ocean. It’s a timeless tale of good against evil, with exhilarating performances and a powerful, enlightening subtext of the importance of caring for and about aquatic creatures. ” – from Georgia Aquarium website
LEGOLAND Discovery Center. Located inside a shopping mall (Phipps Plaza), the Legoland discovery center offers the following:
- LEGO® Factory Tour, an inside look at how LEGOs are made
- LEGO® 4D Cinema, where our children experienced four different 4D LEGO movies
- Kingdom Quest Laser Ride and Merlin’s Apprentice Ride. These were the only two rides at this location.
- MINILAND®, which gave me an idea of places we wanted to visit in Atlanta!
- LEGO® Racers: Build & Test. Our children spent most of their time in this area building and racing LEGO cars!
- LEGO® Fire Academy, a huge indoor playground. When not at the Build & Test track, our boys were climbing around on this large jungle gym.
- LEGO® Construction Site
- LEGO® Master Builder Academy
- DUPLO® Village. This is for younger preschool-aged children.
- Earthquake Tables
- LEGO® Friends Olivia’s House. Our boys weren’t so interested in this one, but it was amusing to listen to little girls trying to sing karaoke.
Here Stephen meets LEGOLAND Atlanta’s Master Builder, from whom he received the inside scoop on how to become a future professional LEGO designer. This guy is the person who designed and crafted all the structures in Atlanta’s LEGOLAND, from the buildings of MINILAND to the ticket master statue at the entrance to the “cinema.” What a fun job!
A couple of fun places to eat:
The Hapeville Dwarf House: The Original Home of Chick-fil-a started as the Dwarf Grill in Hapeville, GA in 1946. Located about 15 minutes from The Hapeville Dwarf House is the Chick-Fil-A Home Office where you can book a free Home Office Backstage Tour. Unfortunately, we couldn’t fit this in because the tour is only available at certain times. Visit Home Office Backstage Tour for tour information and to book your reservation on-line (which is required).
On another afternoon, we visited a heritage site called McDaniel Farm Park. A former cotton farm, McDaniel park has been restored to depict a typical 1930s subsistence farm and includes over 2 miles of paved trails.
Southeastern Railway Museum. When our rail-loving family discovered a railway museum in Duluth, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to climb aboard so many historic locomotives (around 90 items of rolling stock!).
The boys enjoyed learning some rail terminology, toured some historic buses, and even learned how to use a telegraph as they attempted to send morse code across the museum.
I was blessed to meet a incredibly gifted blogging friend of mine down in Atlanta. Her son and ours hit it off right away! It was such a sweet afternoon!
And finally, while we were visiting family south of Atlanta, I captured a snapshot of my husband teaching Levi how to bowl.
Ahhhh…. such great memories!
There were other places on our list that we didn’t get to visit, like the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library (which includes a replica of the Oval Office) and the Atlanta Cyclorama. But… Atlanta is a city we return to from time to time. So… have you been to Atlanta? We’d love for you to tell us where you’ve been and what you’d recommend we visit the next time around!