So I was pleasantly suprised to see the animals were kept in a better environment than some of the European zoos I've been to, infact better than most of them. I was dreading the experience being a bit of an animal person of seeing tigers without fur, hippos in small boxes and monkies on chains. None of this, we arrived kind of late in the day, well the heat of the day and so most of the interesting animals were having a sleep under a tree, but you could see them doing what they would be doing naturally in that heat.
It is not an old or disabled friendly place so if you can't walk far or need assistance in ANY way forget it. You get on a road train and get taken to the far end of the park, dropped off and then you have to walk back (keep tight hold as the guy seems to power out of corners as if he is trying to throw you out), up and down hill, it was pretty hot with child in tow.
They have all the interesting animals, lions, tigers, chimps, hippo's, emu, crocs and a mass of really beautiful birds which seem to get the bad deal there as they are living in what I would consider less than adequately sized cages, but not so small they are unable to jump about and flap thier wings etc. The snakes were pretty unimpressive and out of all seemed to be in bad condition. The black bear seemed pretty depressed living by himself, but he had a massive area to roam around.
So as far as animals went, pretty good. The only thing that spoiled the day was when we had to interact with one of the staff to ask for the pony ride for my daughter. it was 12.15 and I approached with my daughter to ask if we could have a go. I was met with a slouching arrogant disrespectful a$$hole who just tutted and told me they didn't do rides after 12.30. Taking into consideration the rides are about 5 minutes we would have been done and gone by 12.20, 12.25 at the latest I wasn't impressed. I tried to point this out to him in a reasonable manner, met with the same, slouchy tutt and none compliant attitude. My Mrs saw what was about to happen and so grabbed my arm and walked us off in the other direction, not before i told him what I thought of his lazy sh1tty attitude to his job. What really pi$$ed me off was that there was a grand total of less than 10 people in the entire zoo, and only 3 of these were kids and so I doubt the pony or his shoes had even seen dirt that day.
So we walked on down to the infants zoo area, my blood still boiling where we were met by a woman with her phone earplugs in, as I tried to grab her attention in her little box she couldn't notice me as she had volume on full blast. I signed for her to get the earphones out and was met with a 'Ehhhhh', as she pulled one out, music still blasting. I asked if we were to just go in, met with another 'ehhhh', I reached for her other earphone as I was starting to get pi$$ed with this, she pulled back and removed it herself. I was eventually told we have to pay again to get in the little animal zoo within the zoo. I pointed out that we paid at the main entrance but was met with a blank robotic glare as if I was mad to have issue with this. I grabbed the family, mumbled something quite rude to her and walked off down the hill to get us out of there. Truth being if I didn't have to deal with the sh1t customer service I would have quite happily paid again.
So overall, our day would have been great if we didn't have to interact with the Dominican staff, such a shame. I should be used to it and infact am, just frustrated with these morons.
Next time huge photo's are loaded they will be deleted, resize them before loading on DR1 PLEASE
It is not an old or disabled friendly place so if you can't walk far or need assistance in ANY way forget it. You get on a road train and get taken to the far end of the park, dropped off and then you have to walk back (keep tight hold as the guy seems to power out of corners as if he is trying to throw you out), up and down hill, it was pretty hot with child in tow.
They have all the interesting animals, lions, tigers, chimps, hippo's, emu, crocs and a mass of really beautiful birds which seem to get the bad deal there as they are living in what I would consider less than adequately sized cages, but not so small they are unable to jump about and flap thier wings etc. The snakes were pretty unimpressive and out of all seemed to be in bad condition. The black bear seemed pretty depressed living by himself, but he had a massive area to roam around.
So as far as animals went, pretty good. The only thing that spoiled the day was when we had to interact with one of the staff to ask for the pony ride for my daughter. it was 12.15 and I approached with my daughter to ask if we could have a go. I was met with a slouching arrogant disrespectful a$$hole who just tutted and told me they didn't do rides after 12.30. Taking into consideration the rides are about 5 minutes we would have been done and gone by 12.20, 12.25 at the latest I wasn't impressed. I tried to point this out to him in a reasonable manner, met with the same, slouchy tutt and none compliant attitude. My Mrs saw what was about to happen and so grabbed my arm and walked us off in the other direction, not before i told him what I thought of his lazy sh1tty attitude to his job. What really pi$$ed me off was that there was a grand total of less than 10 people in the entire zoo, and only 3 of these were kids and so I doubt the pony or his shoes had even seen dirt that day.
So we walked on down to the infants zoo area, my blood still boiling where we were met by a woman with her phone earplugs in, as I tried to grab her attention in her little box she couldn't notice me as she had volume on full blast. I signed for her to get the earphones out and was met with a 'Ehhhhh', as she pulled one out, music still blasting. I asked if we were to just go in, met with another 'ehhhh', I reached for her other earphone as I was starting to get pi$$ed with this, she pulled back and removed it herself. I was eventually told we have to pay again to get in the little animal zoo within the zoo. I pointed out that we paid at the main entrance but was met with a blank robotic glare as if I was mad to have issue with this. I grabbed the family, mumbled something quite rude to her and walked off down the hill to get us out of there. Truth being if I didn't have to deal with the sh1t customer service I would have quite happily paid again.
So overall, our day would have been great if we didn't have to interact with the Dominican staff, such a shame. I should be used to it and infact am, just frustrated with these morons.
Next time huge photo's are loaded they will be deleted, resize them before loading on DR1 PLEASE
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