ZooZoo Review So Far

This site was created to give an accurate review of as many zoos as possible across the country. It has been a fun and informative process and we are just getting started. So far we have reviewed 24 zoos across 9 states and we've also done one zoo in DC. Here is a look back at the zoos we have reviewed so far by state.

Alabama
Montgomery Zoo

Colorado
Royal Gorge

Georgia
Wild Adventures (Review Pt 1, Review Pt 2)
Zoo Atlanta

Florida
Remember that we are currently Florida based, so there will be a lot more Florida zoos than anything else.
Busch Gardens
Disney's Animal Kingdom
Florida Aquarium
Gatorland
Jacksonville Zoo
Lowry Park Zoo
Mote Marine Labratory
Sea World Orlando
Tallahassee Museum of Natural History
Tarpon Springs Aquarium
The Seas @ Epcot
Wakulla Springs

Maryland
Maryland Zoo
The National Aquarium

Pennsylvania
Zoo America

South Carolina
South Carolina Aquarium

Tennessee
Tennessee Aquarium

Virginia
Leesburg Animal Farm
Reston Zoo

Washington DC
The National Zoo

Our goal is to get you 10 new zoos every year and add at least one new state to our map. Next year we will get on that and hope to bring you more exciting zoos. We will branch into at least one new state next year and that review of the Central Florida Zoo is coming among many other reviews!

-Noland

The Seas @ Epcot

The Seas @ Epcot
Walt Disney World Resort
Lake Buena Vista, FL

Date of Visit: Several Times in 2014

We went to Epcot often this year because we have the annual pass for Disney. In fact, we likely will go a few more times before these passes run out in January. However, we did not go to these aquariums nearly as much as we went to Animal Kingdom. That should give you a good idea of what we thought of this aquarium compared to Disney's other animal attraction. There are not a lot of animal attractions unfortunately. However, we all enjoy this part of Epcot and it is the favorite of our entire family while at the park. If we did not have annual passes this year though, we would not have gone multiple times and we may not have gone at all. It is pretty small when you get down to it.

Website

Pictures

 Tank Full Of Jellies

 More Jellies

 Last Shot of Jellies. This was the coolest part of the area. These guys are by Turtle Talk With Crush. They are neat to look at.

 You cannot always see the Sea Turtle, but we were able to catch him on one trip. Another of the cooler parts of this aquarium.

Hidden Mickey behind the fish.

 Cool looking Lionfish.

 Another shot of the Lionfish.

 A shot of one of the eels.

My favorite creature here, the seahorse. This is the 2nd coolest exhibit they have behind the moon jellies. There are not quite as many seahorse as there are Jellyfish.

Yellow Tang in front of some cool coral.

Overall Review

We give this aquarium 0 out of 5 elephants.
The reason this is so poorly rated is that you get very little bang for your buck in the aquarium. It is $95 to get in which is 4x the price of the FL Aquarium. You pay all of that to get a small building of fish that you can go through in 20 minutes. If you are into the other stuff at Epcot than it is a solid deal. However, if you only want to go for the Aquarium, then it is a major ripoff. I'd choose FL Aquarium over this place any day. If you are solely going to see the fish/animals than this is not the place to do it. I'd go again if we got passes, but no special trips. In fact, if we could get Disney passes without Epcot for a cheaper rate, we'd be all over that. Stay tuned in the next few weeks for a post about the exciting places ZooZooReview has been and will be going.

-Noland

Lowry Park Zoo (Update)

Lowry Park Zoo
Tampa, Florida

Date of Visit: Several Times Late 2012-Late 2014
http://www.lowryparkzoo.com/
Admission: Annual Pass Link
Single Day Tickets

Lowry Park Zoo is our home zoo now, and we visited it a few times a year. We absolutely love it! This new is a great zoo for children. In fact, this zoo is rated #1 in the United States by Parents Magazine and there is reason for the hype. It is the best zoo for kids we agree 100%, had to bump the rating up after we saw it with our son.

Highlights: This zoo is so close to where we live now. It took us less than 10 minutes to get there. There is a very wide range of animals at this zoo from all over the world. They have penguins, komodo dragons, and rhinos which are some of our favorite zoo animals. They also have plenty of elephants, including babies! (Jenna's favorite). They have a walk through with wallabies and so much more!.

Disappointments: Safari ride smelt really bad and gassy. Not sure that is worth waiting for, but no other disappointments.

Photos

Baby Elephant! This is definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

 We love rhinos!

 Me and Jr. in front of the rhinos. This is from last summer, 2013.

 Up close rhino, this is their best exhibit!

 Little hands looking at the rhino cutout.

Outside the aviary in Africa. It was his favorite when he was this small!

Giraffe from the giraffe feeding station.

Wallaby from Wallaby Walkabout

Indian Rhino

African Elephant full grown

The Orangutan exhibit, which is our second favorite at this zoo.

Pygmy Hippo! There was a baby one of these recently too!

This is a great exhibit for African Penguins

The Bald Eagle!

There is a zebra among those giraffes! You can see an elephant in this photo too!

Our last photo for this entry is of this big ol' pig.

We gave this zoo a 5 out of 5 elephants.
Originally, in our first review, we gave this zoo a 4.5. I don't know why we gave that rating because this zoo is awesome! We are planning on getting annual passes to this zoo next year for the family. It is such a neat little zoo to come to. It is pretty perfect and is the best zoo in the country for children. I said it wasn't as good as the Maryland Zoo, but upon further review it's better. We personally like Animal Kingdom and the Atlanta Zoo better, but this zoo would rank solidly at 3 at this point. It is much cheaper than Disney too. This is a zoo that you should definitely visit.

-Noland

Tarpon Springs Aquarium

Tarpon Springs Aquarium
Tarpon Springs, Florida

Date of Visit: Summer 2014

Cost of Admission: Adults $7.75

Seniors $7

Children (3-11) $5.75

Under 3 Free

Hours: Monday- Saturday 10am-5pm

Sunday 12-5pm 

Website

The Tarpon Springs Aquarium was very interesting. It was a bit on the small side, okay it was very on the small side, but it was interesting and fun. The entrance was fun and Jr. loved the shark teeth. He loved running around and the lack of crowds too. His favorite part though was that parking was free. Okay, maybe that was my favorite part and not his, but it is always a plus.

Highlights: No crowds and free parking are huge highlights. We got to save money and got to enjoy the fish without feeling crowded. Good viewing spots for small kids is also a plus. Sometimes the exhibits do not have good places for him to see, but not at the Tarpon Springs Aquarium. Interactive feeding shows are a plus as well. While we didn't stay for any other shows, we saw an Octopus feeding and that was awesome.

Here are some of the pictures we got.

Alligator Snapping Turtle

Albino Python

Full Size Python

Jr. following a fish in the big tank

Crab

Nurse Shark Feeding Tank

Great Grandma and Grandpa holding him up to see the stingray tank

Petting the stingrays

More stingrays

They even had a "Nemo"

Finally a nurse shark in the big tank

We gave this aquarium a solid 2 elephants out of 5. The lack of crowds and free parking made it a worthwhile trip.  However, it was very small. This is one of the worst zoos or aquariums we have rated to this point. I would only say that because it was so small. It rates slightly above the Sarasota aquarium because it was pretty good for its size. Do not plan a special trip for this aquarium though unless you are in the area. It is not that great. It is pretty neat though if you are in the area and looking for something to do. We had fun, but again, don't make a special trip.

-Noland

Disney's Animal Kingdom (Update)

As promised, here is an update since our last visit to Animal Kingdom. This year (2014) we are Disney Annual Passholders for the 1st time ever. Now that we have had the opportunity to be passholders, we know a lot more about the ins and outs of each park. This review will have a lot more detail than the previous review. Unlike our past Animal Kingdom review, this review will include our pictures as well.

Disney's Animal Kingdom

Lake Buena Vista, Florida

Dates of Visit: Several Times in 2014

We went to Animal Kingdom often this year because we have the annual pass for Disney. In fact, we will go a few more times before these passes run out in January. We will probably even go this upcoming weekend. Love this park. For seeing animals it is better if you can go on the safari. You cannot ride the Kilimanjaro Safari ride while pregnant so we missed the biggest attraction at this park when Jenna was pregnant during the last review. Not this year though! Disney's Animal Kingdom is still a fantastic time no matter what. In fact it is the favorite park of several in my family. Our favorite Disney Park (mine, Jenna, and Jr.) is Magic Kingdom because of the amount there is at that park, but this is a close second for all of us. We love Animal Kingdom! Enjoy our comments, and pictures!

Highlights: This is one of the best if not the best animal attractions in the country. You could easily spend the whole day there! They have an amazing "African" area and "Asian" area! The animals are all awesome! There are some spots where you can't see certain animals, but there are so many viewing decks, you could probably move somewhere and get a view of them. The Kilimanjaro Safari is easily the best part and it is probably the closest thing to a safari there is outside of Africa. The up close views of animals on the safari are incredible and some even cross the path. We have never seen rhinos that close and so many of them. The rhino is my favorite animal so it was awesome for me to see them so close. You always get a good view of rhinos and I have never gotten a better view of a hippo than this safari.  It is Noland Jr.'s favorite ride and he wants to ride it over and over again. He loves pointing out the animals on the safari and telling us what they are. The look of amazement on his face is truly priceless everytime we ride this ride. I definitely recommend using your fastpass+ for this attraction at AK. Usually you can walk on this attraction in less than 1 hour too if you get there within the first hour of park opening. Another good idea for riding it is checking the Disney app for wait times and going there anytime there is less than a 30 minute wait. During non-peak season it shouldn't be difficult to ride with little to no wait. You see more the second time around when you go on it. We always try to ride the safari twice when we come. The Komodo Dragon exhibit was another highlight for us as we saw one of our favorite animals and we could see it outside of the safari. Also for Florida Residents you can go to Disney 3 days for $99 which makes tickets extremely affordable. There are also several seasonal and annual passholder options for you to visit this theme park.

You can look at some pictures this time from our many trips to Animal Kingdom. 

When you first enter the park you are directly in front of a spoonbill exhibit. We love the spoonbills.

Another creature featured early in the park is this awesome Iguana.

Waiting for the now extinct parade an awesome worker drew this Mickey for our boy. Disney workers are fantastic at creating magic for the family.

We saw the kangaroos very well from a walkway that goes by their exhibit.

We love the Komodo Dragon it is one of our favorites. This can be seen on the Jungle Trek in Asia.

This is a gorilla from the walking trail in Africa.

Kilimanjaro Safaris is the best place to see hippos that we know of.

We love the rhinos on the safari.

The Nile Crocodiles are crazy looking.

At Disney World we have learned that a group of flamingos like this is called a flamboyance. Check out the elephant in the background of this shot Jenna took.

The rhinos are mine and Jr.'s favorite part of this safari.

This is my favorite photo from Animal Kingdom of just the animals!

This is from his first safari where we got front row. It was a bit chilly that day, but he loved it.

On a different visit he was waving at the rhinos.

Animal Kingdom is a ton of fun!

Disappointments: We did not have many disappointments for this place! We both wish that there were some more walk throughs where you could see more of the African animals outside of the safari. However they did have the underwater hippo viewing area and a walkthrough of some of the animals. This inability to see many of the animals made us miss some of our favorite part of the park when Jenna was pregnant. The safari is not recommended for pregnant women, so you should avoid it if you are. Another good idea would be to add some more bones/plastic dinosaurs in DinoLand for the little ones, but other than that, WE LOVED THIS PLACE! This park is a big reason why someday we will get annual passes to Disney again despite the expense.

We gave it a 5 out of 5!

That's all for now!

Leave a comment or your opinion if you have been to Disney's Animal Kingdom!

-Noland