I have been coming here since I was a child in the 80's and we still stop here when passing through the area. You will get your money's worth at this place. Plan on spending a couple hours here with the drive thru and the walk around the animal cages. You have the option of riding their bus or driving your own car. We opted for our own car so we could stop or go slower where we wanted. You will see practically every animal you can think of, including a couple pesky camels who know you may have food for them. You cannot feed from your own car but you can from the bus. You can feed the animals though on the walk-through area, including a giraffe who is very friendly. You have a million photo opportunities, so have your camera ready. The people that run the place and work there are very friendly and the place is kept up nicely. Its clean and up to date. The animals are well fed and well taken care of. If you like the zoo, you will LOVE this stop. If may be off the beaten path, but its extremely east to get to and well worth the time and money.
If you have been to the park when you could drive through in your car and feed the animals, the park is a disppointment. Now, you can only feed the animals from the bus, full of other people. The guides do try to make sure both sides get visits from the animals. I was disppointed that this change was not listed on the website. Some workers are friendlier than others and there is not a sense of professionality in the park with regard to the workers, their visibility and their background in animal care and knowledge. For families that are not familiar with animals, it could be a good time. A little pricey for about 2-21/2 hours.
This is an open bus tour through the animal sanctuary. We purchased food to feed the animals with prior to leaving the reception center. The tour guide told us that us little interesting things about the animals as we came upon them. One of the camels she told us would "kiss" us if we put the food in our mouth for him to reach up and grab. Sure enough he did!!! LOL! Both my daughter and I did that and LOVED it! Building memories is what vacations is all about after all!!
This "zoo" is just a scam to get your money. I was appalled when I visited!! The cages are that: cages!!! Anyone on here who says the "zoo" was good obviously did not pay attention. They were playing with wild animals like they were pets!! They are called WILD animals for a reason. I saw the animals bite people, all the other animals were sickly and depressed. This is NOT a ZOO. If you want to see a zoo, go to a zoo like the Dickerson Park Zoo, Kansas City Zoo, or the St. Louis Zoo, but don't go here!!!
Fun for all ages! Had lots of laughs! We have been to animal safaris in other states and enjoyed this one as much, if not more than those!
As many others have said, the park has changed. They had an inspection and found out to many animals were being fed the wrong food from people in the cars. So you can no longer feed the animals from your personal car windows.Yes, it is more expensive than before ($19.95/adult). BUT my three grown kids now(21, 18 and 12) plus my husband and I had just as much fun as before. We spent the majority of our time with the walk through animals. Just the closeness you get to the giraffe, being able to feed the monkeys, walk out on the turtle pier, pot belly pigs, hand feeding the goats, ext was ALL worth it. To send th eday we drove our personal car through the drive through area where we saw some more animals up close.The drive through is not the same as before true, but the walk through area is better than before.ps. take lost of quarters so you can hand feed the goats, pigs, giraffe, ect.
Took a fast trip to Springfield to visit friends and stopped here with our 11 year old daughter who is animal crazy! It was so fun to watch her experience the up- close contact with the animals. We definitely felt it was worth the money, as you can spend pretty much a whole day here. (And we did!) The tour bus driver was interesting, informative and entertaining. The best moment of the day, watching our daughters face light up and say "I got to pet a ZEBRA !!!" Priceless.
love it being able to get close to animal drove our car around the zoo. Went to Fantastic Caverns it was a great experience
At first I thought the price was a bit much BUT it is for all day... You can either take their tour bus or drive your own car or even both!! The staff was very friendly and the guided tour was very entertaining. The beasties come right up to the bus and you can feed and pet them. There is one camel there named Clyde and you have to watch out for him... he will steal your bag of food from you! He also tried at one point to get on the bus.. My grandson, who is 4, had a BLAST! I can't wait to go back!
We came here last year when you could drive our own car through the animals and feed them up close but now you can only feed them if you go on the safari bus with other people. You can still drive your car through the safari but can't wind your windows down. Maybe they did this because someone abused the rights of being so close to the animals and they were injured? Don't get me wrong, it's still a cool thing to do but last time we had so much fun in our own car, it's just not the same. We also didn't see as many animals as our previous visit so it all depends on the day, I suppose.