Any Zoos you plan on visiting next year?

@KevinB Don't worry, I think everyone gets it. We've all got your back, and are just trying to find the best way to support you.

 

It looks like 2020 will become another zoo-rich year for me, if everything goes well. In March we are going to Arizona, and Arizona Sonora Desert Museum is on the itinerary (will be a first visit for me).
In June I am planning a Florida vacation, with possible road trip from New Orleans to Naples (if that works out, then Audubon, Gulf World, Jacksonville, St Augustine, Naples, and one or two smaller places will all be first time visits for me).
In July I am likely to go on the (to me) most exciting trip of the year - 10 day zoo trip to Japan! The exact itinerary is still being planed, but the goal is to try to see the maximum amount of species not present in US and European zoos in those 10 days (forest elephant, dugong, Amazon and African manatees, cetaceans, pinnipeds, volcano rabbits, Goliath frogs, Galapagos iguanas, volcano rabbits, proboscis monkeys, created Argus, Japanese ibis, loon, etc).
In August we are planning a trip to Seattle-Vancouver area. There the new zoos will include Woodland Park, Northwest Trek, and Vancouver Aquarium. Depending on how much time we’ll may we may also add a small cruise to Alaska, and if there is a stop in Seward then I’d like to add Alaskan Sea Life to the itinerary.

I really wanted to go to San Diego to see their new platypuses , but this will have to wait till next year (and the planned Japanese trip more than compensates for that). And, of course, I’ll still be going to the “local” zoos that I visit every year (Maryland, Smithsonian National, and the obligatory annual visit to Bronx in early fall, as I haven’t seen their dholes yet!)

 

I’m going to have my first visit to Copenhagen in about six years thanks to very reasonable train ticket prices from Stockholm. So I’ll go to the zoo again next month and have a first time visit to Den Blå Planet.

 

2020 could be a big zoo year, but I'm not 100% sure if all of these will pan out. But tentatively here's how things are looking. A lot of this depends on my finances because haha student loans are killing me and for some godforsaken reason I'm going back to school for my Masters Degree next year. I also may visit a few places not on this list, I work as an illustrator and have applied to vend artwork at a few conventions in other states so if I get accepted somewhere with a cool zoo hey may as well go.

March
Memphis Zoo* (going to be in Memphis for a convention so it depends on how much free time I have)

April
Roger Williams Park Zoo (visiting a friend while her husband is out of state for training)
Detroit Zoo*
Belle Isle Aquarium*

May
Philadelphia Zoo (seeing a friend who works there for his birthday)
National Aquarium in Baltimore OR National Zoo OR Virginia Zoo*
Zoo Knoxville

Summer tbd
St. Louis Zoo AND/OR St. Louis Aquarium*
Henry Vilas Zoo
Potawatomi Zoo*
Indianapolis Zoo*

Fall tbd
San Diego Zoo* AND San Diego Safari Park*
Toronto Zoo

* notes facilities I've never visited

 

I'm not currently making any long-term plans, apart from another multiple day visit to Pairi Daiza I am likely going to do later this year.

In the short term I am considering taking a day off from work to go to Antwerp. I'm not entirely decided on whether that is a good idea though, even if I kinda feel like I need it after the last couple of weeks.

 

I have decided to suspend all my zoo visit ideas and plans for an as of yet undetermined period.

I have not been feeling well lately and I haven't been sleeping well. I don't have much energy and I just feel down most of the time. I also continue to be extremely worried and anxious about the coronavirus epidemic and I do not feel like going to possibly busy public places - I have to task enough risk as it having to use public transport.

After the recent aviary damage and loss of dozens of birds at my local zoo (Planckendael) I have begun to feel disillusioned and disappointed with Planckendael and in fact with zoos in general at this point. I really don't feel like going to the zoo and I'm not really able to enjoy viewing photos from zoos very much right now.

I hope that my love of zoos can still recover, but at this point there has never been a bigger chance of me giving up on zoos.

 

Update: on page 10, I sad I may be going to the Berlin, Hamburg, and Leipzig Zoos. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, it will no longer be happening.

 

Since all zoo visits have been put on hold indefinitely then I thought I'd see how my 2020 plans ave shaped up so far. I didn't visit a single collection in January, but did hit WILD on my birthday in Feb, managed to do Exmoor and (a bonus) Combe Martin, saw the sea otters, and managed to squeeze in a Dudley visit as well. Edinburgh is off the table now, and Birmingham will certainly be visited as soon as life starts to get back to normal.

 

When this all dies down the first thing I'm gonna do is make a damn zoo trip.

 

You and the rest of this forum! RIP to my Zoo Atlanta/Georgia Aquarium trip. If I'd planned it just one week earlier I would have been able to go

 

Ugh, same here. I wanted to go to San Antonio during spring break to go to the zoo but I decided to put it off since I was a little short on cash. Oh well.

And this all happened so soon after I made a Facebook page for my zoo and wildlife photography, I don't have much to post now. I guess I'll go out tomorrow and see if I can get photos around the neighborhood. There are some pretty good birds here that show up infrequently, maybe I'll get lucky, not like I'm doing much else.

 

RIP to my family trip to Florida with ZooTampa, Busch Gardens and Florida Aquarium. Damn Covid 19! As @MightyOrca and @Shellheart wrote: As soon as this nightmare is over, you can see me on a zoo trip.

However: I beg your pardon for beeing selfish. I know that there are people with much more serious problems because of Covid 19 then mine.

 

I think we all have to deal with what we are experiencing and there will be all kinds of grief and upset which in the grand scheme of things might seem trivial but it’s nonetheless what we have to deal with.

I was supposed to be spending about five months this year living with my family in the Netherlands and hopefully visiting lots of zoos (and had tickets for the now cancelled Eurovision) but that is highly unlikely now. If I get to see them in the summer I will be grateful and any zoo visiting will be a welcome bonus.

I’m temporarily staying with friends in London but it’s clearly going to be a lot longer than I’d planned for.

Luckily I got to visit Den Blå Planet just before they closed and had a day at Copenhagen Zoo which was mostly very enjoyable.

I’ve no idea in which direction my life will go now or what zoo visits will be possible. I was hoping to start studies in northern Sweden with Lycksele Zoo being my closest (but still quite far) zoo but as it happened I met someone in Copenhagen and have now found myself in a long-distance relationship. So maybe I’ll end up in Denmark when things start to get somewhere approaching normal. And there’ll be lots of zoo opportunities there with a Copenhagen Zoo annual membership a likely possibility.

The last few years have taught me that life is unpredictable and you never know what’s round the corner. I’m trying to be grateful for what I do have and live in the moment and appreciate what is good whilst being mindful of what others are going through.

 

All of our local parks and trails have been closed for the quarantine, so there isn't even a chance for me to see wildlife that way. Definitely cannot wait till this all ends...

 

I considered going to the state park, but that's closed because an employee is suspected of having the rona. But I think the national seashore is still open. It's tempting to go, but I'm gonna avoid it, can't risk bringing rona home.

This quarantine is making me wish I lived in a rural area with lots of nature.

 

Wisconsin has made all of its state parks free to enter.

@TheMightyOrca I don't know about you, but where I live there are tons of wildlife spots that only serious birders go and regular people basically ignore. At these places, it's easy to see tons of wildlife and very few other people, meaning it's easy to practice social distancing.

 

I've gotta get to Hamerton. It just keeps getting better and better and now with the addition of Echidnas, it's a must!

 

If this crona takes a chill pill then yes Jacksonville for the first time and maybe Henry Doorly too!

 

Assuming corona ends quickly I have decent chances for Omaha and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.