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Excellent zoo!

Excellent zoo!

This one is probably the largest we have visited to date, unless you count animal kingdom in Disney world as a zoo as I do, this zoo has the most animals aside from there. This will be very detailed and cover a lot of questions usually thought of:

Tickets.
Definitely get the total experience pass. Our group was 3 adults and a child. Get them online and print them for the easiest time throughout the zoo and beat ticket buying lines. Also, the souvineer refillable cups are a dollar cheaper if done online, and we scored a 20% off all tickets coupon so everything was cheaper this way. Parking tickets are $17 for a car and only done when you park. Be sure to keep ahold of them as you will need them everywhere something would be an add on to pay for that this pass includes. From what I found is most things can be purchased separately for around $6 for each other attraction.

We did everything that is on the pass. The butterfly garden was kind of a let down as there wasn't many in there and it was small. However it's included so it's OK.

The monorail and the dinosaur safari are excellent sit down times and at opposite ends of the park. The total experience pass includes using the shuttle, but we didn't do that as we chose to walk.

The dinosaur safari was well done. They talk a lot and you get interesting facts. I'd say the total time for this was between 10 to 15 minutes and enjoyed by all of us.

The monorail is a nice break, a little bumpy at times and takes up some time. Do this if you have kids and want a decent longer time to sit and chill for a bit. This was 20 minutes plus and again talked a lot and gave out facts. Be aware the speakers on every tram are a bit loud so sit left if this is an issue.

All the areas we thought were well done. This zoo has a lot of birds so be aware of that. Even so, my 8 year old never got bored of them and enjoyed all the exhibits.

We did cross over on walking the main area a few times by the Madagascar area and children's zoo. It's like the front hub area and this is also the area we parked in.

We arrived and walked in 20 minutes after opening and left in the last hour, so we spent just over 5 hours here in the zoo of the 6 they are open. We didn't take many breaks and could of taken our time a bit more in some areas but having an 8 year old she kept wanting to go to the next animal sometimes quickly, but even as an adult I still enjoyed the pace we moved. I mention this so that way if you have never been, plan on making the arrival time as close to opening as possible.

Some ppl reviewed that animals were not in enclosures. The day we went, we maybe seen 5 areas without animals. These were smaller exhibits and didn't effect our day or mood towards the zoo In any way.

5 hours, 14,800 steps whick was just over 7 miles we covered on foot here at the zoo. There are some hills and steps but I didn't find it to be overbearing as some places.

There is a wide variety of animals here, and it seems to go on forever. While I thought most of the enclosures were well done you will notice some of the signage needs updated, etc. Some of the elements are a little worn and it shows, however there are animals everywhere, they require specific needs make messes constantly and need things like high humidity on top of the weather conditions of new York area and a city, it would be impossible to always be prestige conditions.

We traveled 3 hours to get here, from central PA. We'll worth the trip and the day spent here.

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