The aquarium Draper
The building that doubled, and the tour stage parked outside it
The Living Planet Aquarium, twice the size it was last year.
On 20 February 2026 this aquarium opened a 120,000 square foot wing, roughly doubling its campus and making it the fifth largest in the nation. Every guide written before that date covers about half the building. Here is the whole of it: the new cloud forest, the four original galleries, 600,000 gallons of water, and the 165 foot U2 stage standing permanently in the plaza.
Southern Utah is my home turf. Draper is not, so these pages are researched rather than lived: checked against city, county and venue sources, and dated so you can see how fresh they are. For the on-the-ground work here I lean on a Salt Lake County partner agent.
Start here
The building you remember is now about half of it.
The Loveland Living Planet Aquarium sits at 12033 South Lone Peak Parkway with the interstate running past its front door, and it is the single largest draw in this city by a wide margin. The organisation dates to 1999, spent its early years in a much smaller home, and opened at this site on 24 March 2014 at 136,000 square feet. It took 1.1 million visitors in its first year and has stayed above a million a year since, on roughly 30,000 memberships.
On 20 February 2026 it stopped being that building. The Sam and Aline Skaggs Science Learning Center opened alongside it at 120,000 square feet, which roughly doubles the campus and takes this aquarium to fifth largest in the nation. Anything written about the place before that date describes about half of what is now there, and that includes most of the guides and reviews still in circulation.
What is in the new half is not more fish tanks. It is a multi storey indoor cloud forest, an events venue of a size that surprises people, and an education wing of classrooms and laboratories with university lab space inside it. That combination tells you what the organisation thinks it is: a science campus with an aquarium at the front rather than an aquarium with a classroom at the back.
The aquarium by the numbers
120,000 sq ft
the wing that opened 20 February 2026
600,000
US gallons of water across the building
165 ft
the steel structure standing in the plaza
Fifth
largest aquarium in the nation, since February
The February 2026 half
Three completely different things under one new roof.
The Science Learning Center is not an extension of the aquarium in the ordinary sense. It is three separate facilities sharing a building, and only one of them is what a visitor would call an exhibit. Knowing that before you arrive changes how you plan the day.
| Inside the new building | What it is | Who it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Ford Expedition Asia | An indoor multi storey cloud forest of about 10,890 square feet, running from a mangrove lined riverbank up to a misty canopy, with temple ruins and an interactive climbing zone | Every visitor. This is the exhibit half |
| The Mountain America Event Center | An events venue of about 15,000 square feet holding up to 2,000 guests | Hire, conferences and functions rather than general admission |
| The education hub | Classrooms and laboratories, reported as eleven classrooms with four laboratories and elsewhere as fourteen classrooms, with Utah State University lab space inside | School groups and higher education, not walk up visitors |
Details as published by the aquarium and reported at the 20 February 2026 opening, checked 8 August 2026. Classroom counts differ between sources, which is normal in launch coverage; the aquarium's own site is the place to settle it. Confirm what is included in general admission before you buy, because an events venue and a teaching wing are not exhibits.
Expedition Asia has a history worth knowing. It arrived here on 15 June 2016 as a travelling exhibit, stayed, and in 2026 became permanent inside a purpose built cloud forest rather than a converted gallery. The species list mixes returning residents with new arrivals: Raja the Komodo dragon, the Asian small clawed otters Kai and Emmie, a Matschie's tree kangaroo and a coconut crab, which is a creature most visitors have never seen and do not forget.
The cloud forest format is the interesting design decision. Instead of a corridor of tanks it builds vertical layers, so the same species look different depending on which level you are standing on, and the route rewards going up and then coming back down rather than walking through once. It is also warm and humid, which on a February afternoon in the Salt Lake Valley is a large part of the appeal on its own.
The education wing is the part nobody photographs and the part that explains the whole project. Purpose built laboratories inside a public aquarium, with university lab space among them, is a different proposition from a school room booked out for field trips, and the founder framed the building explicitly around reaching more students. For a resident weighing whether a membership earns its keep, the programming that comes out of that wing is a fair part of the answer.
The original building
Four galleries, and 600,000 gallons of water.
Ocean Explorer is the one people picture: a saltwater sequence ending in the shark tunnel, with nine shark species in the collection. The tunnel's acrylic is three and a half inches thick and weighs 26,000 pounds, which is the sort of number that means nothing until you are standing under it. The largest single tank in the building holds 300,000 gallons, half the aquarium's total water volume of roughly 600,000 gallons on its own.
Antarctic Adventure is built as a Falkland Islands research station and carries gentoo and macaroni penguins. Journey to South America is the humid one, with a 14 foot yellow anaconda, piranhas, electric eels and poison dart frogs, and it is the gallery that most reliably resets a visitor who arrived cold and grey. Discover Utah, added on 24 October 2013, is the local one: Bonneville cutthroat trout, desert tortoises and North American river otters.
That last gallery is the underrated one and it is worth slowing down in. A Bonneville cutthroat is the trout that evolved in the lake this valley used to sit under, and seeing it a few miles from what is left of that lake is a better introduction to the geology of the place than most museum panels manage. It is also the gallery a visiting relative will remember, because everything else in the building could be anywhere.
If what you want is the wider county picture, the outings across the whole valley sorted by activity and price are on the county page for days out in the valley, which puts this building alongside the museum, the zoo, the aviary and the Olympic ice.
Half the water in the building is in one tank, and you walk underneath it.
The thing outside
That is a U2 stage, standing permanently in Draper.
Drivers on the interstate have been looking at this for years without knowing what it is, and it is the best single piece of trivia in this city.
EECO, the Ecosystem Exploration Craft and Observatory, is a 165 foot four legged steel structure standing in the plaza south of the aquarium. It spent two years as the stage for U2's 360 degree tour, a production of seven legs and 110 shows that became the most commercially successful concert tour ever staged. When the tour ended, the structure needed a home, and roughly 200 tons of its steel were recycled into a permanent installation here.
It went up in the autumn of 2019 on a nine acre parcel south of the main building and opened as the centrepiece of the Rio Tinto Kennecott Plaza in 2020. Repurposing 200 tons of touring steel rather than scrapping it and fabricating something new is a genuinely unusual piece of reuse at that scale, and the organisation has been fairly direct that the point was as much the recycling as the landmark.
As a piece of city fabric it does something few buildings manage. It is visible from the freeway, it is legible from a long way off, and it gives an otherwise low slung stretch of the valley a vertical marker. If you are trying to describe where the aquarium is to somebody who has never been, the answer is the enormous four legged thing beside the interstate, and everybody knows it immediately.
The plaza is worth a walk even if the aquarium is closed. The outdoor plaza and its landmark sit outside the ticketed building, and the structure is at its best in the last half hour of daylight when the steel takes the low sun. It is a reasonable thing to detour to on the way past even when you have no intention of going inside, and it is a good place to explain to somebody why this city looks the way it does from the road.
The practical part
Hours, tickets and the Monday that runs late.
| The question | As published in August 2026 | The practical note |
|---|---|---|
| Hours | Monday 10am to 8pm; Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 6pm | The Monday evening is the quietest window in the week |
| Last entry | One hour before close | Which makes a late Monday arrival genuinely workable |
| Admission | Single tickets with reduced rates for several categories, and a reduced rate after 5pm on Mondays | Confirm current pricing at the aquarium before you drive |
| Membership | Sold, with roughly 30,000 members on the books | Worth the arithmetic if you expect to come back more than twice |
| Parking | On site and free | Which is not true of every venue of this size in the county |
| Time needed | Half a day at an unhurried pace | More since February 2026, because there is more building |
Hours and pricing as published in August 2026 and checked on 8 August 2026. A venue that has just doubled in size revises its operating pattern, so treat this table as the shape of the thing and take the current numbers from the aquarium itself.
The single biggest planning change since February is time. A building that has roughly doubled cannot be done in the same afternoon it used to take, and the most common complaint about a rushed visit now is that people ran out of stamina in the new wing rather than that they saw everything. Split it if you have a membership; go long if you do not.
The second is expectation. The new building holds an events venue and a teaching wing alongside the exhibit, so the floor area figure overstates how much of the expansion a general admission ticket walks through. Ford Expedition Asia is the part you are there for, and it is substantial, but it is not 120,000 square feet of it.
And the third is the name. If you hold a ticket for something at the Mountain America Event Center this year, it is here rather than at the district being built on the old prison site, which announced the same name in June 2026. The two are unrelated organisations, and The Point page covers the other one.
Keep reading
More of Draper on The Local.
Things to do
The top 8, ranked
A canyon the city bought, an aquarium wing that opened this year, and a free jump park.
Read the guideThe Point
Built, and announced
Six hundred acres of former prison ground, and what is actually in the ground today.
Read the guideThe canyon
Corner Canyon and its rules
One way climbs, one way descents, Class 1 e-bikes only, and no dogs above the line.
Read the guideThe cycle park
The Draper Cycle Park
Four jump lines, three pump tracks and a cyclocross flyover, and none of it costs anything.
Read the guideMoving here
The Point of the Mountain commute
Two railheads, one pinch in the mountains, and a light rail line approved but unfunded.
Read the guideThe companion
Draper, the whole picture
The canyon, the aquarium, the cycle park, The Point and the commute, in one place.
Read the pageQuick answers
The aquarium, answered.
At 12033 South Lone Peak Parkway in Draper, immediately off the interstate at the north end of the city, with free parking on site. The landmark to aim at is the 165 foot four legged steel structure standing in the plaza, which is visible from the freeway and is the easiest way to describe the location to somebody who has never been. The building itself is visible from the interstate too.
The Sam and Aline Skaggs Science Learning Center, on 20 February 2026, at 120,000 square feet. It roughly doubles the campus and took the aquarium to fifth largest in the nation. It holds three separate things: Ford Expedition Asia, an indoor multi storey cloud forest of about 10,890 square feet; the Mountain America Event Center, an events venue of about 15,000 square feet holding up to 2,000 guests; and an education wing of classrooms and laboratories.
An indoor cloud forest of about 10,890 square feet built across multiple storeys, running from a mangrove lined riverbank up through the layers to a misty canopy, with temple ruins and an interactive climbing zone. Its residents include Raja the Komodo dragon, the Asian small clawed otters Kai and Emmie, a Matschie's tree kangaroo and a coconut crab. Expedition Asia first arrived as a travelling exhibit on 15 June 2016 and became permanent in this purpose built form in 2026.
EECO, the Ecosystem Exploration Craft and Observatory, which is the 165 foot four legged steel stage U2 toured on for their 360 degree tour, a production of seven legs and 110 shows. About 200 tons of its steel were recycled into a permanent installation here, put up in the autumn of 2019 and opened as the centrepiece of the surrounding plaza in 2020. The plaza sits outside the ticketed building and can be walked without admission.
The largest single tank in the building holds 300,000 US gallons, which is half the aquarium's total water volume of roughly 600,000 gallons. The shark tunnel that runs through it is made of acrylic three and a half inches thick weighing 26,000 pounds, and the collection includes nine shark species. It is the centrepiece of the Ocean Explorer gallery in the original 2014 building rather than in the new wing.
In the original building: Ocean Explorer, the saltwater sequence ending in the shark tunnel; Antarctic Adventure, built as a Falkland Islands research station with gentoo and macaroni penguins; Journey to South America, the humid rainforest gallery with a 14 foot yellow anaconda, piranhas, electric eels and poison dart frogs; and Discover Utah, added on 24 October 2013 with Bonneville cutthroat trout, desert tortoises and river otters. Ford Expedition Asia is in the 2026 wing.
Half a day at an unhurried pace, and longer than that since February 2026, because the campus roughly doubled. The most common complaint about a rushed visit now is running out of energy partway through the new wing rather than missing anything in the original galleries. If you hold a membership, splitting it across two visits works better than trying to walk the whole campus in one afternoon.
Monday evening. Published hours in August 2026 ran Monday from ten in the morning until eight at night while Tuesday to Sunday closed at six, with a reduced admission rate after five on the Monday and last entry an hour before close. That late Monday window is the least crowded time to walk what is now a very large building. Hours move, so confirm the current arrangement with the aquarium before driving.
No. They are two unrelated venues in the same city that carry the same name because the same credit union bought naming rights from two different organisations. The aquarium's is an events venue of about 15,000 square feet holding up to 2,000 guests, and it opened in February 2026. The Point's is a 5,000 seat arena that broke ground on 29 June 2026 and has not opened. Until it does, a ticket under that name means the aquarium.
A venue that doubles tells you something about the city around it.
Organisations do not put 120,000 square feet of laboratories and cloud forest into a suburb they think is finished growing, and the same is true of the arena going up a short drive south. If an address at this end of the valley is what you are weighing, tell me what matters and a Salt Lake County partner agent picks up the ground work while I take the homework and the lending side.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.