Plans for the year............................

1) make more money

2) buy a vintage hotrod

3) get a really hot girlfriend

4) take really hot girlfriend to the zoo

 

patrick, you're an animal!

 

Hope it works out for you Pat

 

I take it you're just waiting to hear from the studbook keeper...


Trips booked: Edinburgh in May, Planckendael in October, Valencia aquarium and new zoo in October. Going to stay in a French house in August which is less than 20km from Beauval zoo, might squeeze in CERZA in Lisieux on the way back to the ferry - anyone know if it is worth it?

Snowleopard - all those zoos in such a short time! Is your wife a total zoo geek like the rest of us, or does she just really really love you?

 

im going to Grecce and Rome in 11 days and then my plans are to survive the HSC and to get to Taronga at least once a month still

 

Since both reduakari and pygathrix referenced my upcoming 8 week road trip, I feel compelled to reply. My wife and I are definitely not rich, but simply enjoy spending a good chunk of our saved cash on holidays. If we were to ever win the lottery then we'd probably never stop travelling!

@reduakari: the Bronx Zoo is regarded as arguably the best zoo out of the 216 AZA-accredited establishments in North America, perhaps slightly ahead of San Diego in terms of fame. Maybe the Bronx is the best in the world...but those sort of debates are subjective and everyone has a different opinion. I would love to visit the Bronx, but I think that driving through New York City without stopping is much easier than battling the traffic and all the other headaches that come with that heavily populated area. Plus there are a lot of other tourist attractions to see in the city, and I believe that New York City is a completely separate, week-long holiday on its own. There is still a chance of us visting the Bronx Zoo, but I'd put it at 50-50.

@pygathrix: my wife isn't a big fan of shopping malls (whew!!) or museums, botanical gardens, etc. She was a zoo fan when I met her, but not obsessed like myself. However, after visiting a number of zoos and learning about lots of animals she would now choose spending time at a zoo on holiday over a museum, shopping mall or type of memorial. She takes hundreds and hundreds of photos, and one day I'll have to begin posting some shots here at ZooBeat.

Last year we spent 6 weeks travelling around Australia for our honeymoon, and we visited 14 animal collections across the country: Taronga Zoo, Sydney Aquarium, Sydney Wildlife World, Melbourne Zoo, Melbourne Aquarium, Healesville Sanctuary, Philip Island Wildlife Park, Kuranda Wildlife Park, Crocodylus Park and Zoo, Alice Springs Desert Park, Adelaide Zoo, Monarto Zoo, Cleland Wildlife Park and Warrawong Sanctuary.

This summer I fully expect us to visit the Toronto Zoo and Montreal Biodome in Canada, and then at the very least 10 more zoos in the U.S. The one aquarium that we will definitely see is the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.

 

I have membershipcards of three Dutch zoos (Emmen, Amersfoort and Ouwehands' Zoo in Rhenen), and want to buy a fourth card of Apenheul (monkey zoo in Apeldoorn), and maybe one of Burgers' Zoo in Arnhem. And of course I will visit these zoos several times this year and already did.

I will plan also visits to Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Safari Beekse Bergen and some German zoos. If the weather is fine, you can find me almost every weekend in a zoo.

I can't wait for a sunny and warm day to visit Apenheul. For monkey lovers this is the ultimate place to be. The gorillas have some babies, but I love the small monkeys the most, like tamarins. The golden lion tamarins are my all time favorits.

And I will always take my photocamera with me to take pictures which I of course will show you...

 

ha ha! good one!

 

snow leopard:

One last attempt to influence your vacation choices! Skip Philadelphia and go to the Bronx instead. Philly's traffic/urban annoyances are equal to or worse than New York's and the zoo has very little to recommend it. I'd be willing to wager that Jon Coe and all of the other prominent zoo designers would agree the Bronx has the best exhibits going--David Hancocks said as much in his fine book of 2001. San Diego is not even close using exhibit quality as a metric.

 

Snowleopard: I'd second Bronx Zoo - it's one of the best I've been to. But don't go on a Wednesday (no entrance fee) in the school holidays - the day we went it was totally packed with a mile long queue to see the newly opened Tiger Mountain which we didn't get to see.

UntBwe: don't the Dutch zoos have a reciprocal arrangement whereby if you are a member of one zoo you can get into the others? In the UK lots of zoos do this, and the scheme now includes Dublin, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

 

Yes, if you are a member of a zoo which is a member of the Dutch Association of Zoos you can enter other zoos with some discount. Some zoos also have special discounts on other zoos or amusementparks. Or they have free tickets for other zoos. Example: Rotterdam gives you free tickets for Amsterdam and Antwerp.

And of course some zoos have a magazine for the members, special behind-the-scenes days/evenings, discounts in the zooshops, etc.

For most zoos the price of the membershipcard is 3 times a normal ticket. So if you're planning to visit a zoo more then 3 times you better can buy a membershipcard.

 

@reduakari and pygathrix: maybe I should hit the Bronx Zoo on the road trip. But it seems that with all of the other attractions in New York City then that should be an exclusive, separate trip all on its own. But I'm edging towards going now...we'll see.

One exhibit that I'm intigued to see at the Philadelphia Zoo is "Big Cat Falls". It was built for $20 million and just won the AZA Best Exhibit Award for 2007. It rotates lions, tigers, cougars, jaguars and snow leopards between 5 enclosures and looks terrific from photos.

 

this conversation makes me laugh because there is a group on Facebook called "you know your a zookeeper when.." and one of the reasons they give is "you spend all your vacations visiting other zoos" i think this thread just proved that statment very true!