Coastal attractions live and die by the calendar. This aquarium on Europe's Atlantic coast drew 450,000 visitors in its summer quarter — and barely a third of that in the months either side. The indoor tanks kept operating, but families planned their visits around beach weather the aquarium did not control. What it needed was an evening attraction that made the shoulder season a destination of its own.
The answer was a marine-themed lantern trail built around the one thing every aquarium visitor already loves: the animals in the water.
The Brief: An Ocean That Glows
The aquarium's commercial team had three requirements. The experience had to be unmistakably marine — not generic light decoration. It had to occupy the outdoor plaza and surrounding path network, spaces that sat empty after dark. And it had to be ticketed separately from the main aquarium visit, creating a second admission product from the same footprint.
Inside the building we already show visitors the ocean. What we didn't have was an ocean outside — something that made the plaza itself worth a ticket. The lanterns gave us that in one season.— Commercial Director, Coastal Aquarium
The Design: Species-Accurate, Story-Led
Our design team proposed a narrative trail in five chapters, each tied to a marine environment the aquarium's own exhibits covered. Visitors would walk from the coral shallows to the open ocean, ending beneath a whale corridor — a sequence the aquarium's education team could use for school-group programming.
The signature pieces along the route:
- A pair of three-metre seahorses at the trail entrance — the coral chapter's welcoming figures, curling tail-to-tail above the ticketing arch
- A shark-head scene where a five-metre shark emerged over the path, its mouth framing the walkway into the deep-water chapter
- A school of blue fish lanterns suspended in a wave formation, lit in gradient blues that shifted as visitors passed beneath
- A mermaid scene on a rock formation at the halfway point — the trail's most-photographed figure by a wide margin
- The whale corridor finale: a 15-metre whale spanning the path overhead, visible from the car park, doing the marketing work before a single ticket was sold
Engineering for Salt Air
A coastal site in autumn is not a gentle environment. Every specification was upgraded accordingly: IP67-rated electrical housings throughout because of salt-laden moisture, marine-grade anti-corrosion treatment on all steel, and wind-load calculations certified to the site's stated exposure rather than a generic rating. The install plan placed anchor points away from the plaza's drainage runs, and every cable crossing used ground-recessed protection rated for wheelchair and steward-vehicle traffic.
This is the quiet difference between a marine-grade build and a standard park build sent to the coast: the same lanterns, engineered for the environment that will actually host them.
The Numbers: A Second Season in the Same Footprint
Evening admissions in the shoulder months ran at double the prior year. Average trail time of 105 minutes translated into gift-shop and café spend the daytime visit never matched — families finished the trail at the exit-facing retail point with 40 minutes of evening left before parking closed. The opening nine weeks sold out, and the aquarium extended the run by two weeks on the strength of advance booking pace.
What Made It Work
- The theme matched the venue's identity — marine lanterns at a marine attraction, not borrowed Christmas imagery
- The narrative structure gave education staff a teaching sequence, not just decoration
- Coastal-environment engineering (IP67, anti-corrosion, certified wind load) kept the trail running through autumn storms
- The whale corridor was visible from outside the ticket gate — the single highest-value marketing asset of the build
- Separate evening ticketing turned one footprint into two admission products
Marine and aquatic themes are among our most requested custom directions — seahorses, whales, coral gardens and underwater corridors all ship as fully re-scalable builds. If your venue is planning an aquatic light experience, start the project conversation →
