I went to the Brookfield Zoo last weekend. We basically decided that we wanted to do something special with my daughter since we had her for a big trip this summer and we wanted her to have some memorable moments to go into the school year with. We were getting kind of tired of our local zoo (which is good but we’ve already gone 3 times this year) and thought that this might be a great change of pace.
Our main issue with the trip though was really that it was a spur of the moment trip. We came up with the idea on Thursday night, but was unsure about it until Saturday morning at 10am that we should just go because we would have been bored at home otherwise. So we didn’t get out until about noon. Brookfield is a good two and a half hours from us and the zoo closed at 6pm so we were already at a disadvantage for going. But still we figured three hours at the zoo might be enough, we might miss a few exhibits but at least we’d get out, have a fun trip, and we figured we’d go somewhere to eat as well.
We were a bit wrong. We did get there at three and were more than willing to pay for the tickets (though we are very used to our free zoo), we also decided to pay extra for the children’s zoo, the sting ray petting, and the dolphin show as these we thought would be great for my daughter to get to experience.
We started out walking to the dolphin show since that was close to when we got there and saw the big exhibit on the way. The exhibit was great. It was an indoor desert area and we saw a lot of animals that we normally don’t see in our zoo including a jaguar, meerkats, rock hyraxes and a caracal. They were very high quality enclosures as well and we thought that we did the right thing in going to this zoo.
Next to the dolphin show, we were 15 minutes early and there was already a lot of people so we sat kind of in the back. The show wasn’t one of the better dolphin shows we saw, but it wasn’t horrible. It was a bit short, only about 15-20 minutes long. We didn’t completely feel like we got our money’s worth, but we were still happy we went because my daughter hadn’t ever seen a show like that to our knowledge.
This is when the trip really started to go downhill. We decided that since we were close that we would start walking to the sting ray petting area, where the line was so huge we thought we’d be there for an hour and we didn’t want to waste that much time. We thought it might be because others went there straight from the Dolphin show so we decided to see the Children’s Zoo first and hit it up after that. It took a little while to find, and we passed a lot of empty bear exhibits to get there but the Children’s zoo wasn’t entirely worth going to. It was mostly a farm with a couple (and I mean that literally) of goats to brush. I think for kid’s the local children’s zoo was better since you not only get to pet them, you can feed the goats as well, and you don’t have to pay a couple extra bucks for it as well. There were more types of animals there, but it was essentially a farm which I didn’t find it worth it.
So that done, we returned to the sting ray petting exhibit to find the line nearly empty. Our spirits had returned shortly until we found out that they closed the exhibit at 5pm. This turned out to be a reoccurring problem at this zoo, as even though the Zoo is open until 6pm, most of the exhibits were closed (even going so far as to taking the animals in) at 5pm. Even the gift shops and restaurants were closed for the most part at 5pm which really sucked as we promised my daughter she could by something at a gift shop and had avoided gift shops till the end. (I actually assumed they would stay open later to get leaving families, but apparently while the zoo is extremely greedy, not if it means they have to stay until the zoo cloes).
The highlight of the trip I think was that first exhibit building and the Giraffe exhibit. I do think these were the best Giraffes we’ve seen. They had a huge yard, there were 5 of them (I think) and they seemed very happy and playful. It was a joy to watch them. I was sad that I didn’t get to see the Okapi which would have been a highlight for me as it is one animal I don’t think I’ve ever seen in person.
Overall, the trip was more than a bit disappointing. Some of the zoo seemed great, but much of it was suffering from age. This was disheartening as well as you pay so much more for these bigger zoos only to see it often in worse repair than the local free show. Milwaukee Zoo suffers the same issues, though nowhere near as bad.
I think the trip was worth doing, and I would try again, but we should have planned better. It just sucks that this last hour that they said they had wasn’t there, we may not have gone at all if we knew it wasn’t. We were counting on it to see the zoo…