Today was the Great American Eclipse, and I figured that Coney Island would be as good a place as any in NYC for it, so we took our eclipse pinhole projector to the Aquarium and the boardwalk for MUSEUM MONDAY!
I normally invite you to print it out and try it yourself, but this one might not be especially useful again until 2024. Sorry!
The New York Aquarium is under construction (and has been since Superstorm Sandy in 2012) and a bunch of stuff turned out to be closed, but we still managed to see some cool sea creatures and learn a thing or two.
Found some Blackfoot Penguins gracefully swimming!
Sand Tiger Shark? Check!
Lyric greeted the cownose ray by saying "Hi, you are weird", but not in a judgy way. I think he's just delighted by weirdness.
The green moray eel hides a lot so we never saw one, except the one in this picture. Close enough.
The pacific walrus was "unavailable" and not on display, so Zephyr posed by this walrus display in the gift shop. Pictured: a sarcastic "wheeee".
We got through the aquarium pretty quickly, but that was fine because we were hungry and the eclipse wasn't starting for another hour and a half. After checking out Rudy's Bar and Grill to have some boardwalk food and find a rumored secret passage (never found it), we still had some time to kill, so we headed to the iconic Wonder Wheel.
Plus a few other kiddie rides on the way.
Tip: take the swinging cars on the Wonder Wheel. Way cooler.
And then, by the time we got off the Wonder Wheel, the eclipse got going! Fortunately with our giant box, we were prepared!
And Zephyr happened to be color coordinated.
Was it breathtaking? Not really. It was a dot that turned into a crescent - whooo. But we did it and looked fly doing it, so there. Then we had to conquer some rides!
Lyric was jusssssst too small (just under 42"!) to get on two rides, the Coney Island Sound and the Coney Tower. So Zephyr bravely conquered them for us!
Zephyr conquering the Coney Island Sound.
Zephyr conquers the Coney Tower.
And then it was time to go home. I thought we'd abandon our eclipse viewing box but the kids DESPERATELY wanted to play with it. So it made the long journey home with us as well!
Lyric could not wait to jump in the box.
Final museum Monday coming soon! Stay tuned!