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with our new premium membership to the wildlife conversation society, we decided to head over to the new york aquarium on coney island. after unsucessfully trying to get pizza at totonno's (closed for renovations) and instead stopping off at nathan's for a hot dog and cheese fries, we walked across the abandoned areas of the coney island amusement park (it was like a scene from The Warriors). the cyclone and the wonder wheel, of course, were still running, but everything else looked pretty sad. that is, until we got to the aquarium, which was, i'm afraid to say, even sadder. granted, the new york aquarium was founded in the late 1800's. some of the exhibits didn't look like they had been touched since the 1970s. we didn't feel too bad for the invertebrates, but the sea mammals could use a better facility for sure. lucky for them, we recently read that there is a $100 million renovation of the aquarium in the works right now. it will include one of those state of the art 1 million gallon tanks. bailey really liked the walruses. vina and matt really like the sea otter. there is already one new exhibit, for jellyfish, which is actually quite cool. we strolled up the boardwalk back towards the subway and had a sad glass of lemonade. back on the subway and back to manhattan with a tired out bailey, matt and vina.