South Lakes Safari Zoo
Last Visit May 2016
We last visited here in 2008 (pictures at bottom of page), when it was called South Lakes Wild Animal Park and was really looking forward to returning and seeing the changes they had made. We’d spent a day up at Lake Windermere on the Sunday and planned to visit the Zoo on the Monday, so we had booked a night at the Abbey House Hotel (see review and pictures here) on the Sunday night, which was only a few miles south of the Zoo. Travelling up from Abbey House Hotel, we initially missed the turning in Dalton-in-Furness and took the wrong road, meaning we arrived on the A590 at the roundabout, where there is no access to the zoo entrance and didn't not seeing any signs, we didn’t realise we should have turned right, so mistakenly we went left and had to sweep back around through Dalton-in-Furness, over the A590 and then did a sort of U shape around to the zoo car park.
The zoo entrance has definitely changed from what I remember of our visit in 2008 (pictures at the bottom of the page), with a much nicer, larger, well designed layout, with tills on both sides, you can see straight through to the gift shop, which looked very large and colourful.
We had arrived for the zoo opening at 10am, so weren't surprised at how quiet it was and with the new entrance, we didn't really recognise it. Walking 'round it was peaceful and spacious, but we couldn't help feeling there was a lack of animals; we didn't see the lions, arctic wolf or the snow leopard and some of the animals we did see, lacked in numbers.
Although the “safari” style of this zoo means you can get closer to the animals, visibility of some animals was disappointing, like the bridge over the snow leopard enclosure was shut off and compared to our visit in 2008, we felt most changes had been to the entrance, however looking at the old satellite image against where we walked (image further down, below videos), it has been extended quite a lot, but I guess this isn't representative walking 'round, due to most of this extension being large enclosures. I appreciate some zoos become overly commercialised and the challenge is to get a happy balance, in order to bring funding, the zoo needs to provide an experience that makes visitors want to return and we didn't feel the safari style wasn't enough of a unique experience, to compensate for what you can't see.
Staying at Abbey House hotel meant we had got a discount on the entry fee (£10 each instead of £15.50 each) and we felt it hadn't improved enough or had enough animals to charge £15. Sadly we came away feeling a little disappointed and wouldn't return for quite a few years and seeing things like what looked to be a new, much larger giraffe house, hopefully means there are big improvements coming.
We last visited here in 2008 (pictures at bottom of page), when it was called South Lakes Wild Animal Park and was really looking forward to returning and seeing the changes they had made. We’d spent a day up at Lake Windermere on the Sunday and planned to visit the Zoo on the Monday, so we had booked a night at the Abbey House Hotel (see review and pictures here) on the Sunday night, which was only a few miles south of the Zoo. Travelling up from Abbey House Hotel, we initially missed the turning in Dalton-in-Furness and took the wrong road, meaning we arrived on the A590 at the roundabout, where there is no access to the zoo entrance and didn't not seeing any signs, we didn’t realise we should have turned right, so mistakenly we went left and had to sweep back around through Dalton-in-Furness, over the A590 and then did a sort of U shape around to the zoo car park.
The zoo entrance has definitely changed from what I remember of our visit in 2008 (pictures at the bottom of the page), with a much nicer, larger, well designed layout, with tills on both sides, you can see straight through to the gift shop, which looked very large and colourful.
We had arrived for the zoo opening at 10am, so weren't surprised at how quiet it was and with the new entrance, we didn't really recognise it. Walking 'round it was peaceful and spacious, but we couldn't help feeling there was a lack of animals; we didn't see the lions, arctic wolf or the snow leopard and some of the animals we did see, lacked in numbers.
Although the “safari” style of this zoo means you can get closer to the animals, visibility of some animals was disappointing, like the bridge over the snow leopard enclosure was shut off and compared to our visit in 2008, we felt most changes had been to the entrance, however looking at the old satellite image against where we walked (image further down, below videos), it has been extended quite a lot, but I guess this isn't representative walking 'round, due to most of this extension being large enclosures. I appreciate some zoos become overly commercialised and the challenge is to get a happy balance, in order to bring funding, the zoo needs to provide an experience that makes visitors want to return and we didn't feel the safari style wasn't enough of a unique experience, to compensate for what you can't see.
Staying at Abbey House hotel meant we had got a discount on the entry fee (£10 each instead of £15.50 each) and we felt it hadn't improved enough or had enough animals to charge £15. Sadly we came away feeling a little disappointed and wouldn't return for quite a few years and seeing things like what looked to be a new, much larger giraffe house, hopefully means there are big improvements coming.
The below video was taken on our visit in May 2016 of a Giraffe that kept sticking it’s tongue out and swinging it from left to right
The below video was taken on our visit in May 2016, it’s the Baboons who share an enclosure with the Giraffes.
The below picture is a satellite image taken from google maps, I’m not sure when this image was taken, but you can see with our gps travel log overlayed, at the bottom left is the old car park entrance and the new entrance is on the right. You can also see how it has been extended to the north east.
2008 Pictures