What it means
Say OdySea to a Scottsdale parent and they will know exactly which July afternoon you mean. It is the aquarium on Via de Ventura, just east of the 101, with sharks, penguins, otters and a stingray lagoon, and its next-door neighbor, Butterfly Wonderland, is the glass conservatory full of live butterflies that younger children often like better. Together they are the default answer to “it’s too hot to do anything,” and the Scottsdale with kids guide treats them that way.
The word does double duty. People say OdySea for the aquarium and, loosely, for the whole complex around it, which is exactly why the complex changed its own name. Officially the place is now the Arizona Boardwalk, home to the aquarium, the butterflies and a rotating cast of smaller attractions.
Both have a Scottsdale address and neither is in Scottsdale. They sit on land of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, in the entertainment district locals call Talking Stick, along with the casino, the ballpark and Great Wolf Lodge.
Where you’ll meet it
On every rainy-day and hot-day list, in the museums and attractions guide, and in directions that begin “past the Pavilions.”
Where the word came from
The butterflies came first. Butterfly Wonderland opened in May 2013, the first attraction in what its developers called OdySea in the Desert, and billed itself as the largest indoor glass butterfly conservatory in America. By its tenth anniversary it reported more than 2.3 million guests and more than 600,000 butterflies flown in its conservatory.
The aquarium that gave the complex its name opened on Labor Day weekend, September 3, 2016. OdySea Aquarium covers about 200,000 square feet, holds more than two million gallons of water across more than 65 exhibits, and has a signature ride, the Voyager, a stadium-seat theater with 46-foot viewing windows inside what the aquarium calls the world’s only rotating aquarium. The name is a pun, odyssey plus sea, and no one has claimed credit for it.
The pun worked too well. Visitors assumed everything in OdySea in the Desert was part of the aquarium, and in February 2020 the complex renamed itself Arizona Boardwalk. Its chief marketing officer told KJZZ the point was to show “we’re more than just the aquarium.” The aquarium kept its name; the complex got a new one; locals, for the most part, kept saying OdySea.
What it is not
It is not a city attraction, and it is not part of Scottsdale’s tax base. The Community is a sovereign government that has built its freeway frontage, from the Pavilions to Salt River Fields, on its own terms. It is also not Dolphinaris, the separate swim-with-dolphins business that operated in the complex and closed in 2019 after four of its dolphins died.
The fine print
The numbers explain the place’s role. KJZZ reported in 2020 that the complex drew about a million visitors a year, roughly 70 percent of them local residents. That makes it less a tourist trap than a Valley utility, the indoor afternoon for families when golf, hiking and patios shut down for summer.
The aquarium is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the standard most visitors mean when they ask whether an animal attraction is reputable. Dolphinaris was not part of the aquarium, but it shared the complex, and the deaths of four dolphins shadowed the whole site until it closed in 2019.
The setting carries history the brochures skip. The 101 corridor through the Community exists because of a 1990 right-of-way agreement that left the Community in control of its interchange corners, and the September 3, 2016 page explains how the aquarium fit the Community’s long build-out of that frontage. Two million gallons of water put on display in one of the driest metros in the country is either a marvel or an irony, depending on your mood. Both readings are fair.