Week 165: ACNH @ Birch Aquarium
- elenalilamartin
- Mar 7
- 3 min read
Week 165: March 1st-7th, 2026
This week, my sister and I channeled our inner kids and fueled our love for cute video games by attending the Animal Crossing New Horizons Aquarium Tour at Birch Aquarium up by UCSD. This is a really cute partnership Nintendo of America is doing with aquariums in the USA that runs from February 16th to March 26th, 2026 at the Birch Aquarium in San Diego.
Back in Week 42 (wow, was 2023 really three years ago?!), I saw the first iteration of this Animal Crossing Tour when I went to the Seattle Aquarium. While I wasn't a super big Animal Crossing fan at the time, I do still remember it being quite underwhelming, especially for an aquarium so close to the Nintendo of America headquarters. I also thought the merchandise in the gift shop was incredibly disappointing, and to this day, one of my most-liked public comments on an Instagram post is about said disappointing merchandise.
Thankfully, this new and improved version of the Animal Crossing Tour seemed a bit more thought-out. Not only was the merch infinitely better, but there were significantly more cut-outs of characters and little informative plaques from the game's resident wise owl, Blathers. I also have a deeper appreciation and understanding of the game now that I have clocked 650+ hours playing... but that is besides the point. I think Nintendo did a much better job with both the merchandise offerings (even though a lot were sold out) and the general marketing of the event.
Our tickets were the normal aquarium entry price of about $35 per person, and the Animal Crossing stuff was included with regular entry. We arrived at 11am and spent about two hours exploring the aquarium and ooh-ing and aah-ing at the merch.
There was a kiosk with a QR code to scan so we could get Nintendo Points, and when we walked in, they gave us a free Kapp'n patch! I've since stuck it on my Switch 2 carry case.
As we walked through the aquarium, my sister and I took photos with every character standee we found (except for Timmy & Tommy in the gift shop because it was crowded).
At a lot of the exhibits, there were little informative pages on many of the touch-screen displays with Blathers in all his glory. I tried to take a photo of all of them, but I may have missed a few. All of the sea creatures and fish you can find in the game are actually real animals, so it was fun to see the real-life versions swimming around in their tanks.
It was incredibly obvious which people were at the aquarium specifically for the Animal Crossing event, and which groups were just normal aquarium patrons. We shared our excitement with a few people with cool Animal Crossing themed shirts and keychains as we dodged around small children and their parents. The "regular" people were probably confused by the number of grown adults being excited about standees and fish, but oh well.
One of my favorite parts of the event was a surprise in one of the low tide habitats where we stumbled upon something... or someone... familiar. Gulliver, the silly seagull that washes up on shore in ACNH, was washed up on one of the exhibits!
It was hilarious to imagine Nintendo being like, "Yeah, we're gonna ship you a plushie of this sailor seagull guy... can you just put it somewhere...?" and then one of the aquarium employees being like..... "Sure...?" Or even better, one of the aquarium employees plays the game and did this of their own accord. Either way, I loved it.
The gift shop offerings, while much better than the 2023 tour, were still not enough for me to make a purchase, but I appreciated the selection. Apparently, a lot of it was sold out already. I saw online that there were once Gulliver and Molly plushies, but we only saw Francine and Kicks. Alongside some sticker books and game guides, there were also puzzles and shirts in kids-size only (missed opportunity for those of us with adult money!). My sister got herself the largest size kid shirt they had, hoping it would fit. It does, but its snug.
Bonus: After what I am estimating to be about 25-30 hours, I finished my diamond painting! Now, the tricky part will be finding an appropriate frame for this so I can hang it up somewhere.
See you next week.
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