Blank Park Zoo

Reviews 3

MA

Matt Uhlman

Great small/medium zoo! Located in the southern part of Des Moines, its a bit of a drive from a lot of places, but overall not terrible. Its reminiscent of other Urban zoos and though not as large as some, it kept us busy. The entrance is quite nice and theres plenty of parking. If you go past the first lot and continue to the second it gets you very close to the entrance and it seemed to be ignored by a lot of people. Entry was $13 for adults and $18 for Kids 3 and up. Online I saw prices that were a little lower so you may get a discount for prepaying. Upon entering the park, your first greeted by a red panda who will very likely be sleeping perched atop his lookout. It was nice for the kids to be able to see something and identify it right away. You then continue on through a very easily walkable loop. Id recently been to the San Diego Zoo and while this one was not as big, its much easier to navigate and many exhibits that were on par with what we saw out west. After you continue along the path away from Mr. Red panda, Zoo an Australian exhibit. The coolest part about this was that they have wallabies they just hop around outside of cages. At the zoo in Brisbane Australia they have a similar setup, only they let you pet the kangaroos there! The spirit of Steve Irwin however still lives on in this smaller rendition where the wallabies entertain, there are a number of bird houses including one with parakeets that you can feed (we found out feeding a parakeet is a big deal for a three year old), and they have black swans wandering around and swimming in the water - didnt know that black swans are native to Australia #themoreyouknow. Another heads up - feeding the parakeets was $2, and $1 to go into the parakeet area. The next area you come to is another feeding area for goats, llamas and a donkey. A dollar will get you a small cup of food and $5 get you a small bucket of food. This is another one of the favorite areas as they allow the kids to interact with the animals. Additionally there were a couple of peacocks who were stressing about with all their glorious plumage displayed, as well as a place to ride a camel. That was pretty expansive and a great place to burn off a little bit of energy. After this area, we got to the more traditional animal exhibits and I must say that I was rather impressed with most of them. The seal exhibit was well done and had both and above and underground viewing area - they were playful and kept everybody entertained. Near that was a lion exhibit that was big enough for the Lions to roam but small enough to where you can actually see them when they were laying down. The number of other large cats including a snow leopard - really beautiful. For bigger animals they have two Black rhinoceroses, a few Elands, a couple of a large African plains animals and then a giraffe exhibit.The giraffes were far and away our favorite. There were four or five of them in a really nicely done area that allow them to roam. You are able to get very close and really appreciate how beautiful they are. Whole thing took about 2 hours without a lot of stopping. It was a really good size Zoo for our little guys and allowed us to make our way through without stopping to rest much or needing to grab lunch while we were there. Wish we knew about this place sooner because it would have been something that we would have taken advantage of more. Well worth checking out and something that would be fun to check out on a fairly regular basis.

CH

Christina Smith-Ziegler

The zoo was a fun experience overall but we were extremely irritated with the camel rides. Our 8 year old daughter wanted to go on for a ride at 1:15pm for $5 but was told that she couldnt go on as a single rider because the camels were exhausted. After we asked what we could do, being that we only had one child, the employee at the ticket counter told us that if we purchased a souvenir photo for another $5 then she could ride. So, its ok to exhaust the animals if we buy a photo?!?!!!! I wouldnt have purchased anything at all after hearing this if I didnt already tell my daughter she could go. Its just appalling. Now, the woman at the counter didnt even give us the option of pairing up with another single rider at the ticket booth but when we got to the front of the line, the attendant wanted to pair her with another single rider. So....why did we have to buy a photo?? We refused the pairing because we had to purchase the photo but we saw many other singles get paired because the attendant would ask the children if it was ok to pair up while the parents were below the line entrance and couldnt hear the conversation. These people all HAD TO BUY the photo and then got paired up anyway. It felt as though they were being conned. There were quite a few people that I saw this happen to while I was there and this had to go on all day. It adds up to quite a bit. After all of this and the ride was done, the attendant asked us to wait for the photo at the bottom of the stairs. After about 20 minutes of waiting for the picture, we went back to the ticket booth and asked for a refund on the photo as it was taking way too long. She REFUSED to refund us and left the booth to "help [the attendant] with the printer". After 10 minutes, she comes back and said it will only be 5 more minutes. (At this point, she tried to climb in the ticket booth window because she had locked herself out!). Of course, 5 minutes turned into another 5 minutes then into another 5 minutes. When all was said and done, we waited about 1 hour and 10 minutes for the camel ride and a photo we didnt want to begin with. This whole operation was completely unprofessional and I would NOT recommend it to anyone. If you are taking your kids to this zoo, I would skip this attraction.

SO

Sommer Kastl

We recently visited while in town on vacation. We are from Nebraska and have Omaha and we also are in love with the KC zoo but we have smaller children and love smaller zoos for so many reasons. We had many different feelings while visiting Blank Park Zoo. We enjoyed the front desk very much. The girls were incredibly friendly. They went into detail to explain how everything worked to us. They were so sweet and genuine. What an amazing start! The train staffing was great as well. We also loved gathering information from the youth volunteers so willing to educate and help. Our son enjoyed learning about seals from one nice young gentleman. The camel ride staff was okay while we visited. We had saved the carousel for last bc it is our childrens favorite. The women running seemed unhappy from the time we saw her from a distance. It was very uncomfortable when we arrived to ride. Her poor attitude and unfriendliness was a huge disappointment to the end of our visit. The animals were beautiful and taken well care of. We loved the baby rhino! And our baby loved those gorgeous giraffes!

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