Been a while since I did one of these, but since Ohio is home to a few zoos I definitely want to visit, I'd like to see which AZA facility in that state you think is the best.
I’ve never been to any of these but there are 6 I definitely want to visit: Akron Zoo, Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, Cincinnati Zoo, Toledo Zoo and Aquarium, Columbus Zoo and Aquairum, and The Wilds Ohio is blessed with so many AZA zoos I need to take off my bucket list haha
Columbus was definitely my favourite after my recent visit last year. Everything about it is great. I really didn’t want to leave, so I went and saw almost the entire left side of the park. But if you want to see the cheetah run, go to the right side of the park first because you won’t see them if you go to the left. I am going here again in the summer, but there is a chance we may reschedule our trip to New York, resulting in us cancelling our trip to Ohio. I have also been to Toledo, Cincinnati, and the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, but the only one that I saw all the way through was Toledo. Toledo has an awesome aviary and aquarium. They are possibly the best exhibits there.
If voting purely on what is the "best" Ohio zoo, Columbus is the pretty easy winner; if going by "favourite", then I'd take Cincinnati over Columbus.
Out of the big four, I went with Toledo because I think it does a better job than the other zoos of presenting the diversity of animal life. Cincinnati does a great job of this as well, but the aquarium and museum at Toledo push it over the top for me. Cleveland and Columbus are also very good zoos in my opinion, but Cleveland's exhibits are too scattered to feel cohesive and Columbus veers a bit too much into theme park territory at times.
