After nearly three years of planning and construction and one postponed opening, Georgia Aquarium's $110 million dolphin attraction will open April 2.
Formally dubbed AT&T Dolphin Tales, the exhibit and show will include interactive displays about conservation efforts and a 25-foot-long underwater viewing window that guests will encounter on their way to the main draw: a Broadway-style theatrical show with actors and dolphins highlighted by heavy production values.
The opening date and a few details about the still-secret exhibit and show, housed in an 84,000-square-foot, two-story indoor expansion, were revealed Wednesday during an announcement ceremony at the aquarium.
Though the 1,800-seat auditorium is complete, and the show has been in rehearsals for months, aquarium officials are keeping most specifics under wraps until closer to opening, trying to build anticipation among metro Atlanta residents and tourists.
"People don't have any idea what to expect," aquarium President and Chief Operating Officer David Kimmel happily acknowledged.
Kimmel predicted if visitors come expecting a gymnastic-style dolphin show, typical of Sea World and smaller attractions, they will be in for a surprise. "These dolphins are not gymnasts, they're actors."
Aquarium founder and CEO Bernie Marcus, who characteristically exhibits a showman's zeal in promoting the downtown attraction, did not appear at the announcement. But in a taped "webisode" played on large monitors, Marcus said he and other aquarium leaders traveled the world seeking cutting-edge dolphin presentation ideas.
"Reinventing the wheel is not what we wanted to do," he said. "We just wanted to make it so much better."
Kimmel said the creative team includes artists with credits in Hollywood and Broadway. The only artist identified by name so far is composer Tim Williams, whose original musical score was recorded by a 61-piece orchestra at Sony Pictures Studios in Los Angeles.
"If you like music, if you like actors, if you like singing and if you like dolphins," Kimmel said, "you'll want to come and see this show."
The entertainment element of the exhibit is a certain draw for tourists, but it also provides ammunition for those who believe aquariums should not display dolphins, period.
"By displaying and aggressively marketing confined whales and dolphins, the aquarium is revealing itself to be out of step with the moral and ethical standards inherent in leading-edge marine conservation," said Steve Mussman, owner of Sea Lab dive shop in Lawrenceville. "The Georgia Aquarium has within its power the capacity to either perpetuate the status quo or become an industrywide leader by setting a standard that helps to promote the more progressive and effective whale and dolphin conservation efforts worldwide."
Aquarium chief animal officer Billy Hurley said that while he respects opinions such as Mussman's, he believes detractors are missing the point.
"What we do here is inspire people, and we choose many different formats to inspire. It hasn't been written anywhere that you can't have a good time to have inspiration," Hurley said. "Walt Disney said if you want someone to learn something, entertain them first. I don't think we've contradicted our mission by having an entertainment aspect to it."
Hurley also noted that some of the feats the dolphins will perform during the show, such as midair flips, are merely examples of their physical prowess.
"I look at people playing with their dogs in the park and see the dogs jumping really high in the air to catch a Frisbee and say, ‘That dog is having a lot of fun.' That's exactly what you would see in the training of our dolphins; our trainers are playing with them every day," he said.
The animal stars were all born in captivity, hailing from aquariums in the Bahamas, Bermuda, Hawaii and from Marineland, the attraction near St. Augustine, Fla., that the Georgia Aquarium took over this year.
Originally slated to make its splash in mid-November, Dolphin Tales was postponed to give the 11 Atlantic bottlenose dolphins more time to acclimate.
Entry to AT&T Dolphin Tales is separate from general admission; guests will be required to purchase an advance ticket to guarantee a seat inside the auditorium.
Combination aquarium-dolphin tickets, ranging from $25.95 for children to $37.45 for adults, can be purchased at www.georgiaaquarium.org.
Kimmel said attracting repeat visitors to the aquarium, which has drawn 13 million since its 2005 opening, "is greatly important." Of the 2.2 million who visited in 2010, roughly 35 percent were repeat visitors.
"I think people forget," Kimmel said. "They go about their lives and [think], ‘Gee, what is there to do here?' There's a lot to do here."
Prior to the main event, an extensive pre-show will inform guests about the aquarium’s conservation and rescue missions with all of its animals.
“We want to show what we’re doing with whale sharks and how much we’ve learned about these animals -- show how we’ve healed sea turtles and put them back into the ocean," Kimmel said.
Beginning Wednesday, the short webisodes about various elements of the exhibit started being streamed on the aquarium website, with a new vignette showcased each week until the grand opening.
“We want to talk about the vision, opening up the door and opening up people’s minds and then building on that,” Kimmel said.
Marcus’ vision is what prompted AT&T to brand the exhibit, making it the first physical attraction in Atlanta to bear its name.
“When you work with a visionary that has such a big dream," AT&T Mobility and Consumer Market President and CEO Ralph de la Vega said of Marcus, "you want to be part of that.”
AT&T Dolphin Tales is the sixth permanent gallery at the aquarium, which was recently named the world's largest by Guinness World Records. The 1.8 million-gallon dolphin exhibit makes the aquarium a more-than-10 million-gallon fish tank.
“Our bottom-line desire is that we hope to inspire the guest that comes in here,” Kimmel said. “If we can touch their hearts and change the way that they act and start to think about conservation and not throw trash in the ocean ... that’s our goal.”
