The Wilds Reviews

I loved it and so did my family. The 90 degree weather didn't even bother us, well maybe a little. Our tour guide, Michael, was amazing.

This place is absolutely amazing. I've been here twice and have awesome tour guides both times. I always look forward to coming here!

Get up close and personal with exotic animals! A guided open bus tour takes you through the conservation land. Explore the bird sanctuary, multiple pastures with camels, rhinos, giraffes, deer, bison, and other animals. Stop at the carnivore area for a snack at the cafe and walk paths where cheetahs and painted African dogs play (behind fences of course). Great experience! Tour lasted approximately 2.5 hours.

This is an amazing place! Friendly and knowledgeable tour guides. Nice facilities. Loved the bird barn!!

Our family thoroughly enjoyed the open air safari tour. We intentionally went on a weekday to avoid any crowds and were very successful. They space groups out on the bus to maintain distancing and clean between tours. Our guide was Bob and he did a great job keeping the kids engaged and telling stories. Highly recommend for getting the kids out of the house as safely as possible in these crazy times.

WOW!!! What an amazing place.This is a great place to get up close and personal with some really cool animals. It's like your own personal safari. If you haven't been, GO!!! If you have been, GO AGAIN!!!

Awesome tour with many great sights. Very close to animals in a huge place.

Love this place. It is a great place to visit, see the animals....beautiful.

An incredible experience. An amazing combination a zoo and safari experience. Helping preserve so many rare, endangered and extinct in nature species. Plus a helping local wildlife on reclaimed Mine lands. The Hellbender lab is one of my favorite aspects.

It's a wonderful place with very friendly staff helpful I think they have just as much fun as any guest.

You get very up close and personal with some of the animals. We had a great tour guide. Definitely an experience we've never experienced before. Very worth it. Camera and binoculars would be a great idea to bring. You do stop along the way at two stops so if you want to bring a little snack pack or drinks otherwise you can buy them there. Was a very enjoyable time.

Fun place. Very informative driver who does their best to show you a sample of all their animals. Bumpy roads but it's a safari!

I took my teenage grand daughters for a ziplining tour. We were a little late getting there. They called to check on us and were very nice about waiting for us. Our guides, Trina and Haley were great. We felt very safe and had a great time. All of the staff that we met was very friendly and things seemed to run smoothly. Thanks Wilds! We will be back sometime for more fun and adventure.

It's really incredible that a place like this exists within 2 hours of Columbus, Ohio. We stayed at the new cabins on Straker Lake, which were amazing. Wee also did ziplining and the wild side tour, where you actually get to drive up to the animals and see them up close and personal.

Fantastic place for people of all ages, and I highly recommend it to everyone.

it was ok,,,, maybe the day we went the animals just didn't move around that much , but we didn't see a lot.

This place is absolutely beautiful. Great way to experience the animals and learn a little bit about the conservation and preservation efforts that the Wilds is doing.

Its great seeing wild animals from all over the world in a place where they have space to roam.

My wife and I have a membership and yesterday was my first time going. The ride was like going out of the atmosphere it was so bumpy. But other than that, you do get surprisingly close to several animals.



Good day trip and fun for everyone. Make sure your kid can stay seated for the majority of the experience though.

I took my little brother there. We aren't the most wealthy, but even with the bus tour we still had a blast and got to see a lot of beautiful animals.

Great place to work or just visit way better than a zoo

We are extremely lucky to have this facility in Ohio. Everyone should go it's an awesome experience

Always a great place to visit especially on national rhino day

The staff is great, the scenery was pretty. We did the sunset trail ride we did would have been lovely except, my horse would not stop grazing. I fought with it almost the whole way. This was my 6th time trail riding. I have never had that ridiculous of a horse. It was sweet but stubbornly only wanted to eat. Fighting a 1400 lb animal for 2 hrs was exhausted and sucked all the fun out of it!

We were so close to so many animals. It was wonderful!

If you love creatures as much as I do you will LOVE this place. Very knowledgeable staff and very kind and compassionate. I took the 2 hour open air safari and it was beautiful.

Love this place.amazing.see ya in September for an overnighter.

I've been here twice now and absolutely love this place. It's an immense wildlife refuge, and there is very little actual walking around like a zoo but there is a ~2-hour bus ride around the park to see the various animals in a wide open habitat zoos usually can't provide.
There are a couple stops along the bus tour to get out and stretch your legs and walk around, with one featuring two chances to feed animals (birds and fish), and the other features the predatory animals that can't be left to roam free for the safety of other animals. The carnivore section also features the only chance to get a snack on the trip outside of the other restaurant at the gift shop.

Great guides, got see lots of animals is an environment they can run and live in, more natural than the local zoos very nice

The animals are so close to the bus you can easily photograph them. The rhinos are now closer to the road for better viewing. Great place to take kids and is about 2/12 hours long with breaks.

Great way to spend a day off or take friends and family.

Went horseback riding here and it was really pleasant. The employees were very knowledgeable about horses and were friendly.

Beautiful place but please remove the flies from the dining area

Such a lovely place to see animals in the wild. Loved the guided tour and seeing the animals up close. Would love to come back again!

Nice experience watching the wild animals up close. But I must say this place is only a little better than any other zoo. The wild dogs and cheetahs are kept in captivity. A good effort to bring the place as close as possible to these animals' natural habitat, but one can only do so much.

I would recommend this place to anyone. We stayed overnight in a yurt and it was absolutely fabulous. The dinner and breakfast that is included was delicious and the open air safari was so much fun. Definitely a go to spot in Ohio!

Amazing experience backed by professionals and leading the world in conservation

Amazing animals, amazing views. The people who run the tours are very informative about the animals and the land donated to the Wilds.

Awesome everyone should check this place out really cool for kids also .

My family and I did the longer zipline "safari tour" at The Wilds near Cumberland, Ohio. The zipline was fun and the guides were great! (There were 3 guides and they wore masks for COVID). We zipped through some woods and over 2 ponds that did have some animals nearby to view from the towers or while zipping (if you are paying attention to the scenery while flying through the air).

However, we paid for a 2.5 hour zipline tour, and it lasted only about an hour for 10 zips. The 5 zip tour was rated at 1.5 hours, so probably would have actually been over in 30 minutes. I believe that we got done so fast because there were only 5 of us, and they normally would take 9. They are limiting to 6 people per session, due to COVID. Let me tell you that the 10 zip tour is well worth the additional $30 per person, if you can afford it. I will note that you do not get to see all of the animals on the zip line tour, like the giraffes and rhino. You have to book a bus tour to see most of the animals. The thrill and scenery of the zip line make up for that, though. (Tip: Take binoculars or a high zoom camera, and you can see many of the animals from behind the visitor center at the top of the hill. That view is free, except for the $6 parking fee.)

We did encounter some confusion when making the reservations. The Wilds is now run by The Columbus Zoo. When I called to make reservations, I was told that the daily bus tours were booked for our date. So we could not do that. However, when arriving at the parking lot, the very nice attendant said, "Sure, we can get you on the last bus tour." By that time, we had paid for the longer zip line tour, and had to be somewhere else later in the day, so we opted out.

Would I do it again? Maybe in some years down the road, due to the cost and not seeing as many animals that we would have liked to. We had not been to The Wilds in 12 years, and again, 9 years prior to that. It helps to keep time between visits so that you enjoy it better, as it does not offer the amount of animals that The Columbus Zoo does.

Breath taking, historical, educational and lots of fun

ABSOLUTE WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY! For my husband, 7yr old daughter and myself @ $30 a person, we paid $90 for a 2 1/2 hour open bus tour to see common roadside animals. The only neat thing we got to see were the 3 rhinos (mom, baby & a male). They came right up to the bus close enough to touch, Although we were not allowed to reach out and touch them. The rest of the animals were "rare" horses, donkeys, cows, deer and an ostrich. There were zebras and a herd of camels But they were too far away to be excited about.
Then there was the "carnivore center" that had hyenas sleeping under a shelter about 100ft away from the enclosures edge. And cheethahs about a half a mile away. For all we know that was a large stuffed cheetah propped up on the side of the hill!
By the end of the tour my husband and i were yawning and my daughter was laying down in the seats with boredom. Very dissapointed. We could have went to a zoo seen more animals and saved a lot of money.

Connie was great tour guide. She told us interesting facts and had terrific sense of humor. The animals are close to view and the grounds are beautiful.

Horrible. Drove all that way for nothing. We didn't know you had to have reservations. Very rude person at gate just smiled and said sorry

An Absolute MUST!!! It's such a different experience than going to the zoo. Great for children and adults!!!

Great experience. Worth the long drive. Very informative. These people are doing great things for conservation.