ROYAL OAK, MI - You can now walk from South America to Antarctica through a fun little passage in Metro Detroit.

The Detroit Zoo on Wednesday cracked open the doors to their new Polk Penguin Conservation Center, a $30-million facility 83 penguins now call home, in a media preview ahead of the April 18 public opening.

It's the zoo's largest project ever, and the biggest penguin facility in the world.

At 33,000-square-feet, the exhibit is a sensory assault from the moment guests enter the through the gates at the Zoo.

From the outside, the facility looks like a massive iceberg. The facade is set at an angle, creating a feeling upon approach of floating up to a behemoth block of ice in the ocean.

And the penguins are front and center. Guests are met with a wide floor-to-ceiling window into the penguins' habitat, which fades from sand to snow as guests progress through the exhibit.

There's none of the unpleasant smell that sometimes met guests in the Zoo's old exhibit.

The exhibit is designed to give guests the immersive experience of traveling with Sir Ernest Shackleton across the Drake Passage. Guests enter in South America, board the ship by walking through a video and sound exhibit, pass through tunnels to view the birds in the water, and exit through Antarctica, which features a second big window display on the snowy side of the habitat.

The Center is filled with visitor-focused perks. At every viewpoint, there are screens displaying information on the four types of penguin that call the Zoo home. In the underwater portion of the exhibit, projectors show fast facts on the birds, such as their top speed and what they eat.

The penguins are getting the all-star treatment, according to Zoo CEO Ron Kagan.

"(We wanted) first and foremost to create an experience that was very fulfilling for the penguins," he said. "And we knew that would be thrilling for our visitors."

The penguins have a 25-foot deep, 326,000-gallon pool to swim in, which is about 10 times bigger than the pool in their old habitat. They also have constant snow on the Antarctic side of the exhibit.

Scott Carter, chief life sciences officer, said there are multiple features inside the habitat, like the snow, that create a constantly-changing environment for the penguins.

There are different substrates throughout, offering the birds different places to walk and to nest. There's a wave machine in the water, which can be turned on periodically throughout the day. The exhibit is kept at 37 degrees fahrenheit, the water at 40 degrees.

One of the only differences between the Zoo's habitat and the wild is that in the Zoo, there aren't any predators, Carter said.

Because of that, Kagan said, the Zoo has a few penguins in the rookery who are over 30 years old.

The space is big enough to accommodate more penguins, Carter said, but it's also built with an attention to the fact that penguins in the wild find safety in numbers.

"Penguins like a crowd," Carter said.

And after a two-year haul, it's nice to see the animals get used to their new home.

"I think we're all kind of amazed with how it turned out," Carter said.

Said Kagan while he stood before the biggest display in the exhibit: "We designed it so that there's an experience for visitors everywhere.

"We've done our homework," he said.

Part of the difficulty of creating new exhibits, said Kagan, is that it's hard to give visitors an experience that can't be done in the wild. Some people can go to South America or Antarctica to see penguins, he said.

So the Zoo takes visitors underwater and installs tubes and viewpoints in the habitat that allow people to see the penguins dive, zip around and porpoise through the water.

Once all the penguins move into their new home (the zoo's King Penguins still need to be moved) the current penguin exhibit will be turned into a bat conservancy.

The Polk exhibit opens to the public April 18, free with zoo admission. But with large crowds expected in the beginning, all guests will be required to have timed-entry passes, which will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis at admissions.

Members of the Detroit Zoological Society will have exclusive after-hours access to the exhibit in the coming weeks.

Ian Thibodeau is the business and development reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. He can be reached at ithibode@mlive.com, or follow him on Twitter.