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.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
The Loveland Living Planet Aquarium sits right off Interstate 15 at the north end of Draper, and it is the biggest single attraction in the city by a wide margin. In February 2026 it roughly doubled: a 120,000 square foot wing opened alongside the original building and took it to the fifth largest aquarium in the country. Plan on half a day now rather than a couple of hours, aim for a Monday evening if you want it quiet, and know that the giant four legged steel tower out front is a recycled U2 tour stage you can walk up to without a ticket. Hours and pricing change, so take the current numbers from the aquarium itself.
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 organization 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 drew 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 the 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 story indoor cloud forest, an events venue of a size that surprises people, and an education hub of classrooms and university laboratory space. That combination tells you what the organization thinks it is: a science campus with an aquarium at the front rather than an aquarium with a classroom at the back. Two practical notes before you plan the day: budget more time than any older guide suggests, and the tall steel tower in the plaza out front is a recycled U2 tour stage, not decoration. Both have their own sections below.
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.
Ford Expedition Asia is the part a general admission ticket walks through, and it is substantial, but the floor area figure overstates how much of the expansion you actually see: the events venue is booked for functions, and the education hub is a teaching space for school groups and university students. Expecting 120,000 square feet of new tanks is the one way to leave disappointed, so it is worth knowing the split before you buy.
What is inside the new building
Expedition Asia has a history worth knowing. It arrived here on 15 June 2016 as a traveling 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 hub 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 classroom 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 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 one of the most successful concert tours ever staged. When the tour ended, the structure needed a home, and roughly 190 tons of its steel were recycled into a permanent installation here.
It went up in the fall of 2019 on a nine acre parcel south of the main building and opened as the centerpiece of the Rio Tinto Kennecott Plaza in 2020. Repurposing about 190 tons of touring steel rather than scrapping it and fabricating something new is a genuinely unusual piece of reuse at that scale, and the organization 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 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 across two trips if you have a membership; go long if you do not.
Mondays run later than the rest of the week, with a reduced admission rate later in the evening and last entry an hour before close, which makes a late Monday arrival both cheaper and quieter. Every other day closes earlier. Tickets are timed and priced by day and slot, so buying online ahead of time is worth it, and parking on site is free. Hours and pricing shift, especially at a venue that has just doubled in size, so take the current numbers straight from the aquarium's own site rather than from an older guide.
One last thing on the name. If you hold a ticket for something at the Mountain America Event Center, check which one: the aquarium's venue opened in February 2026, while a separate 5,000 seat arena carrying the same name is being built a short drive south at The Point. The two are unrelated, and the page on The Point covers the other one.
Planning a visit
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
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Read the pageQuick answers
The aquarium, answered
At 12033 South Lone Peak Parkway in Draper, right off Interstate 15 at the north end of the city, with free parking on site. The easiest landmark to aim for is the 165 foot four legged steel tower standing in the plaza, which you can see from the freeway, and the building itself is visible from the interstate too.
The Sam and Aline Skaggs Science Learning Center, which opened on 20 February 2026 at 120,000 square feet and took the aquarium to the fifth largest in the nation. It holds three separate things: Ford Expedition Asia, an indoor multi story cloud forest of about 10,890 square feet; the Mountain America Event Center, an events venue of about 15,000 square feet that holds up to 2,000 guests; and an education hub of classrooms and university laboratory space.
An indoor cloud forest of about 10,890 square feet built across several stories, 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 traveling 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 that U2 toured on for their 360 degree tour, a production of seven legs and 110 shows. About 190 tons of its steel were recycled into a permanent installation here, put up in the fall of 2019 and opened as the centerpiece 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 centerpiece 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, with Bonneville cutthroat trout, desert tortoises and river otters. Ford Expedition Asia is in the 2026 wing.
Plan on half a day at an unhurried pace, and a little more 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 the campus across two visits works better than trying to walk all of it in one afternoon.
Monday evening. The aquarium stays open later on Mondays than on other days, with a reduced admission rate later in the evening and last entry an hour before close, and that late window is the quietest time to walk what is now a very large building. Hours change, so confirm the current schedule with the aquarium before you drive.
No. They are two separate venues in the same city that share a name because the same credit union bought naming rights from two different organizations. 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 one at The Point is a 5,000 seat arena that broke ground in June 2026 and has not opened, so for now a ticket under that name means the aquarium.
A venue that doubles tells you something about the city around it
Organizations 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 stay on the file for the research and the lending side, at no cost to you.
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