Well, that one was a long time coming. It's practically been falling apart for years It's a shame they're being predated on. But it is nice to have a more active species in the Crocodile hall I swear, I'll punch someone if they keep changing it. I just printed the new version and it's already inaccurate again Do we know why the elephant shrews are behind the scenes?
Perhaps a more sustainable way for you to make them guides would be to distinguish between ''feature species'' and ''overflow species''. The Crocodile River is 100% surplus animals, same goes for the four species that disappeared from the Victoria Serre. Those tend to be moved around a lot more than proper 'feature' species.
The enclosure of the White-naped mangabeys (Cercocebus lunulatus) has been renovated, at the start of this week they were released back into their enclosure. Source: Instagram of Diergaarde Blijdorp (06/02/2022) https://www.instagram.com/p/CZl2uprqgis/
Completely unexpected, a gorilla was born this morning in Diergaarde Blijdorp. Mother of the young is Aya, father is Bokito. The sex of the young is still unknown. The young is very welcome but was not planned. Despite the fact that Aya is on birth control like all the other females in the group, she had become pregnant. Source: GORILLA GEBOREN - Diergaarde Blijdorp
Some news from the Dutch zoo magazine "De Harpij": - Six sailfin sculpins have arrived from Lisbon. - From a private breeder came 0.2 Blue-crowned laughingthrushes. One of them moved on to Beauval.
The zoo closes early today with storm Eunice rolling in, which is believed to be worse than the last storm. Join me in solemn prayer for Amazonicas poor, poor roof.
Diergaarde Blijdorp is also closed today due to storm damage. Several trees have been blown down and it needs to be determined whether there is damage to the buildings as well.
To my knowledge Amazonica hasn't been closed (except for corona, of course). But when I visited in 2016 (or something) the outside layers of some of the air cushions had already ripped. And when I visited again this year it hadn't been fixed (or it ripped a second time)
Amazonica did reopen after they patched that original hole, Im not sure how it handled the recent weather though.
Rotterdam Zoo to continue working with time reservations post-pandemic Blijdorp schrapt coronaregels, tijdslot is een blijvertje
This is completely ridiculous and makes it really hard and extra stressful to visit if you are coming from a (longer) distance away and have to deal with things like traffic. I guess most Dutch zoos will be off the schedule forever for me, given that I live in Belgium...
For now only Blijdorp has announced such a move, other Dutch zoos haven't announced anything yet to my knowledge... I also disagree with it as the only option, helpful as it is. Why not offer discount tickets with a time slot online and slightly more expensive tickets at the gate. That said despite the time pressure it gives, they won't stop anyone from entering... I visited Blijdorp again yesterday, only for the second time since 2015. And while it was an enjoying visit, it is impossible to not notice how many enclosures have been lost in the past 15 years and not replaced, I can think of 20 easily excluding the whole Riviera Hall. Blijdorp still has an interesting collection, with quite some rarer species and probably it is the most well-rounded one in the country. But compared to the recent past it is but a shadow and with a future where they increasingly want to focus on having multiple enclosures of a few species, I think it will only become more boring for me... There isn't anything really bad in the zoo, with the exceptions of the Taman Indah indoor area, but I struggle to name anything world class either. What struck me is how bad even recent enclosures have aged. The Amazonica roof being just one example. A lot of enclosures opened in the past 20 years are already too small, like the polar bears, tigers, black rhino, pygmy hippo and Francois langurs. Blijdorp certainly is not the only zoo that builds enclosures that are not future proof and bound to age badly, but in the Netherlands it is a minority... In the Oceanium I was struck by how outdated the signage was, if a tank had signage at all. In some cases it got all but one species wrong. I know aquarium signage is difficult to keep up to date, but no signage seems to have been updated in the past 10 years... With all the outdated signage one gets the impression the building has been losing a lot of interesting species in recent years with only generic replacements. The sailfin sculpins (Nautichthys oculofasciatus) are an excellent addition at least (but naturally unsigned). I noticed the Cape ground squirrels are also gone from the weaver aviary, hope this is just temporary...
No other park has announced they will be letting go of the time slots. I have mailed two other parks and one replied that they will also be maintaining the mandatory time slots, and follow them fairly strictly. I doesn't say anywhere that they will not stop anyone from entering, one can in my opinion only go by what they say on their websites and what is said there is a rather strict "you have to be on time", putting the responsibility square in the court of visitors. I assume that this policy will be enforced especially strictly on busy days - and for us, visits to Dutch zoos are usually only possible during weekends. I don't see any other option at this point than to just give up on visiting the large Dutch zoos, forever, as this time slot business makes it impossible to visit without added stress. After all the blows that I've had in the past two years, this is likely one of the final blows towards me leaving the zoo hobby behind.
There are always options, even if you don't trust a zoo that they would let you in if you are slightly late. You can't let a hobby that you like beat you in such a way. The easiest option is one is to be early, which is something I always do if I do not want to miss a specific train or flight. Let's say you want to visit Burgers' Zoo, which is a roughly 2 hour drive. If you plan to arrive half an hour before your time slot starts (which are 30 minute slots). You can then have a delay of 1 hour and still be on time. And let's be honest, a 1 hour delay on 2 hours driving is extremely unlikely and would give you a more than valid excuse to be late and still allowed entry. The other option only works for zoos like Blijdorp and Artis, where you only have to reserve a time slot at the desk to buy a ticket at the entrance given you have a KMDA annual pass. There you can book 2 consecutive time slots. As you don't pay to reserve these time slots, it gives you extra room to accomodate any delay. For Gaiazoo KMDA annual pass holders don't even have to book any time slot and can just arrive any time. That said when I bought my ticket at the Blijdorp entrance, they didn't even ask to see my time slot and just helped me anyway.
When combining this and all the other factors that have come up in the pas two years, I think I have unfortunately already been beaten. I am trying to see options, but I see serious problems with every possible option. If these time slots were one hour I wouldn't be complaining as much. But 30 minute time slots are just too narrow if you have to travel about 2.5 hours (i.e. Burgers), about 1.5 hours (GaiaZoo) or about 2 hours (Blijdorp), and even if you leave early, circumstances during the travel could easily push you out of that time slot. I would actually consider a delay of up to an hour to be quite likely if something like an accident, a police checkpoint or weather circumstances like thick fog were to happen. Also even when leaving early the time slot business would give me added stress. Right now that added stress is something I just cannot have, as it would seriously impede the chance of a pleasurable visit and de facto makes it impossible to even consider one at this time. And especially for the parks that require longer travel, leaving extra early might just not be feasible. And if you were to arrive early, who says they could not make a problem about that also? As far as I understanding things, there are no valid excuses that will be accepted or even considered, especially on busier days like during the weekend. And you could just happen to have a particularly strict, unfriendly or grumpy member of staff in front of you to make the decision whether you can enter or not. The responsibility falls squarely on visitors to ensure they arrive on time and arriving outside of a time slot will almost always and automatically result in refusal of entry. Legally they could perfectly refuse you entry for being even one second outside of your time slot. Some parks might accept a later arrive if you are able to give notice, but we would be unable to do so as our phones do not allow us to make other than emergency services calls once across the Dutch border. I have not seen the information on the KMDA pass holders anywhere and I cannot find it either, so I think that part is incorrect as there is no official confirmation for it. As far as I understand it pass holders of other zoos fall under the same rules as other day visitors and are required to arrive within a time slot, or will be refused entry.
The information on KMDA annual pass holders comes straight from their website and I can personally confirm that there is 0 reservation necessary for Gaiazoo if your zoo annual pass gives you reduced entry. I am also surprised you say you cannot use your phone outside of Belgium, relatively recent EU regulation ensures that no extra roaming costs apply when outside of your home country. What is your provider? Take a step back and try to relax and discuss the options I listed above with someone close to you. You know that you can be overly pessimistic and the scenarios you draw are not realistic. When is the last time you had a delay of over 1 hour in a 2 hour drive (outside of weekday rush hour). And police checkpoints are so insanely rare here it doesn't even make sense to bring them up. If given your condition it is so difficult to deal with any kind of uncertainty, your best option is to contact the zoo before and explain why you feel you cannot visit with the current regulations in place and ask for an exception given your condition.
Do you perhaps have the link where I can find the KMDA info for GaiaZoo and/or Blijdorp? Then I'll look into it further. According to GaiaZoo's website third party tickets DO actually have to make a reservation. I have actually had a delay of even way more than an hour on a 2.5 hour drive once, when returning from a visit in Germany years ago. That resulted from a serious accident at a road construction site. We've also had a bad weather situation with stuff being blown onto the highway resulting in a rerouting and a massive delay, albeit also on the way home. So personally I would not consider road accidents or bad weather as being unrealistic. But I admit I am probably overestimating the chances of such things happening. Traffic jams are of course always a possibility, but there isn't much you can do about that other than leaving in time, checking information about construction sites and perhaps listening to traffic radio. I am going to look into the phone stuff further myself, maybe I will contact my provider about that. That's the least I can do. I will consider your idea of contacting zoos, but I don't assume they will be automatically accommodating for such things. And I don't really like to ask for special provisions without absolute necessity.
Even not talking that traffic jams and train delays happen most days of the year in the Rotterdam region. The idea to being forced to arrive on a half hour slot is inherently against the idea of a relaxing family day in the zoo. A zoo is not the same type of entertainment as a cinema or a concert. It is one of more nonsense management decisions in the zoo world I know of. I guess Blijdorp zoo wants to focus on being a local zoo for Rotterdam citizens who can travel by foot or a bicycle.
