Twycross Zoo
Parking
Arriving at the zoo there’s a few large car parks and the staff were loosely directing people into spaces, the car parks are only a short walk from the entrance with a smaller car park closer to the entrance for disabled parking. Near to the car parks there’s a sign for a nature reserve, we didn’t go for a look, but maybe on a return visit.
Arriving at the zoo there’s a few large car parks and the staff were loosely directing people into spaces, the car parks are only a short walk from the entrance with a smaller car park closer to the entrance for disabled parking. Near to the car parks there’s a sign for a nature reserve, we didn’t go for a look, but maybe on a return visit.
Entering the zoo starts by arriving in a large building, which contains the gift shop, The View Restaurant, the vine café and the toilets, which have ant enclosures built into the wall above the sinks, a nice, interesting to encourage kids to wash their hands.
To enter the actual zoo, you then leave this building and the kiosks/booths for tickets/entry are outside, it was a bit strange that the main restaurant was at the beginning and to go in you had to leave the zoo, which we did and to enter back in we just showed our receipt.
We didn’t get given a map of the zoo, which is always nice to have, however I had downloaded it to my phone, not the easiest to see on a smaller screen, but enough to see, with the help of the odd map boards around the zoo.
The first part of the zoo did coincide with some reviews we had read on a popular review site, which suggested the older parts of the zoo were looking very tired and we did see this. Although not as bad as we were expecting from reading the reviews, but as an example one enclosure had about 4 broken windows, peeling paint from the frame and further around the zoo there was another 2 windows in one enclosure boarded up. What I find most strange is there was no attempt to cover up the boarded windows, with like a large poster for example, at least this would have made it look a lot nicer.
As we walked around the zoo, we found that it lacked some display boards at the enclosures, there were many empty enclosures, but you didn’t know until you went up to the window and looked through, so some signs to let visitors know the enclosure is empty would help.
Another comment on the reviews was there are a lot of dead ends and we also found this, for example we headed down to what’s marked on the map as the explorer zone, there’s a kids play area, donkeys and the smaller animals rabbits, guinea pigs, but this was at the end of the day and we wanted to get back to the exit, however there was no way through and we had to walk quite a distance back up to the main street to then head back down to the exit, yet at one point there was a double gate which you could clearly see blocked us off from the main street, but no obvious reason why it would be closed.
I know not everyone agrees with having animals in captivity, for me zoos are important in helping with conservation of animals, however a good zoo is all about getting the balance of providing the right size/type of enclosure for the animal, whilst also ensuring visitors want to come back. With that said, we found Twycross zoo was a bit of a mix, the penguins pool was a bit smaller than most we’ve seen; however, they had less penguins than most zoos, but we were only about 2 feet away and had a great viewing point. The Meerkat enclosure was very similar to other zoos, with viewing all around, but as with most enclosures with windows, the reflection means you can’t see in very well and with not very many animals, if they are inside, you probably won’t see them.
There’s also some walk through areas, like for the Lemurs, although we actually saw more Lemurs after we’d left the enclosure, goats but for some reason it was closed due to the weather, not sure what that meant and if you don’t mind birds flying around your head, there’s Lorikeet landing. The newer enclosures seemed to be a lot better, the Gibbons have 4 large outdoor areas, which can be seen very well and even thought they were indoors at the time, we could still see them due to the nice large indoor building you can walk through with large viewing windows.
To keep attracting visitors back and with it funding, I think there are improvements needed, there’s not a lot of animals, some only 1 or 2, so access/viewing of the enclosures is important. We only saw one rhino, luckily it was in the rhino house, otherwise apart from a window in a small building down by the Giraffes, there didn’t appear to be anywhere to view their paddock.
Food and Drink
There are a few ice cream kiosks around, but we only saw 1 savoury option, which was a BBQ hut selling hot dogs/burgers and other then having to go back to the View restaurant, (which we ended up doing), the only other food place is The Catch, which as the name suggests is mainly fish. There are however plenty of places if you want to take a picnic, which is probably what we would do if we return, outdoors there’s benches dotted around, plenty of areas to sit on the grass, whilst there’s also an indoor picnic area called The Grazing Post.
Summary
With all the above said, we enjoyed our visit, it’s a good full day out, at present we would be in no rush to return, however we hope with the addition of the tiger enclosure due to open soon and hopefully they’ll make some improvements in the future, this will be somewhere we would consider revisiting.
To enter the actual zoo, you then leave this building and the kiosks/booths for tickets/entry are outside, it was a bit strange that the main restaurant was at the beginning and to go in you had to leave the zoo, which we did and to enter back in we just showed our receipt.
We didn’t get given a map of the zoo, which is always nice to have, however I had downloaded it to my phone, not the easiest to see on a smaller screen, but enough to see, with the help of the odd map boards around the zoo.
The first part of the zoo did coincide with some reviews we had read on a popular review site, which suggested the older parts of the zoo were looking very tired and we did see this. Although not as bad as we were expecting from reading the reviews, but as an example one enclosure had about 4 broken windows, peeling paint from the frame and further around the zoo there was another 2 windows in one enclosure boarded up. What I find most strange is there was no attempt to cover up the boarded windows, with like a large poster for example, at least this would have made it look a lot nicer.
As we walked around the zoo, we found that it lacked some display boards at the enclosures, there were many empty enclosures, but you didn’t know until you went up to the window and looked through, so some signs to let visitors know the enclosure is empty would help.
Another comment on the reviews was there are a lot of dead ends and we also found this, for example we headed down to what’s marked on the map as the explorer zone, there’s a kids play area, donkeys and the smaller animals rabbits, guinea pigs, but this was at the end of the day and we wanted to get back to the exit, however there was no way through and we had to walk quite a distance back up to the main street to then head back down to the exit, yet at one point there was a double gate which you could clearly see blocked us off from the main street, but no obvious reason why it would be closed.
I know not everyone agrees with having animals in captivity, for me zoos are important in helping with conservation of animals, however a good zoo is all about getting the balance of providing the right size/type of enclosure for the animal, whilst also ensuring visitors want to come back. With that said, we found Twycross zoo was a bit of a mix, the penguins pool was a bit smaller than most we’ve seen; however, they had less penguins than most zoos, but we were only about 2 feet away and had a great viewing point. The Meerkat enclosure was very similar to other zoos, with viewing all around, but as with most enclosures with windows, the reflection means you can’t see in very well and with not very many animals, if they are inside, you probably won’t see them.
There’s also some walk through areas, like for the Lemurs, although we actually saw more Lemurs after we’d left the enclosure, goats but for some reason it was closed due to the weather, not sure what that meant and if you don’t mind birds flying around your head, there’s Lorikeet landing. The newer enclosures seemed to be a lot better, the Gibbons have 4 large outdoor areas, which can be seen very well and even thought they were indoors at the time, we could still see them due to the nice large indoor building you can walk through with large viewing windows.
To keep attracting visitors back and with it funding, I think there are improvements needed, there’s not a lot of animals, some only 1 or 2, so access/viewing of the enclosures is important. We only saw one rhino, luckily it was in the rhino house, otherwise apart from a window in a small building down by the Giraffes, there didn’t appear to be anywhere to view their paddock.
Food and Drink
There are a few ice cream kiosks around, but we only saw 1 savoury option, which was a BBQ hut selling hot dogs/burgers and other then having to go back to the View restaurant, (which we ended up doing), the only other food place is The Catch, which as the name suggests is mainly fish. There are however plenty of places if you want to take a picnic, which is probably what we would do if we return, outdoors there’s benches dotted around, plenty of areas to sit on the grass, whilst there’s also an indoor picnic area called The Grazing Post.
Summary
With all the above said, we enjoyed our visit, it’s a good full day out, at present we would be in no rush to return, however we hope with the addition of the tiger enclosure due to open soon and hopefully they’ll make some improvements in the future, this will be somewhere we would consider revisiting.