San Diego Zoo San Diego: The Perfect Zoo?

San Diego Diego is arguably the best beer city in the country. The food scene is good as well, especially for Mexican. Of course the weather and landscape are big positives as well.

 

Fair enough, I misinterpreted your meaning then, same as TLD. I didn't mean to imply any ignorance by people thinking San Diego is the best, I was just sharing my own experience with non-nerds who have visited- those experiences being part of the reason I felt the need to create this thread Not trying to get overly defensive, so apologies

~Thylo

 

Out of curiosity, I googled "Top Tourist Destinations in San Diego" and the first ones to pop up were, Balboa Park (Location of the zoo), the zoo itself, SeaWorld and the Safari Park. Other destinations included plenty of historic sites, museums, shopping malls and the famous hotel del Coronado, which I raved about in my trip earlier this January. Other than the zoological parks and beaches (more enough to satisfy myself) as far as places for family go, only Belmont Park comes to mind. You may be on to something.

 

San Diego does have other attractions (Legoland, museums, the beach, a famous ship, a historical district, shopping, Major League baseball) but you're right about the zoo being established as one of the top attractions for its city. Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha fits that profile even better; it is a huge zoo with public recognition and high attendance in a city that few people would ever consider for a vacation.

We've gone quite off the path here, but I'd like to rewind a bit and ask this: is the fact that San Diego is world-famous (and I think it's mostly agreed that it is world-famous) actually an indicator of it being the "best" zoo, or even one of the best? Some people seem to have implied that, but if that's the case I'm not seeing the rationale behind that.

 

Yes but none of those things are the same as Hollywood, or the Statue of Liberty, or Big Ben. I'm not trying to suggest the zoo is only famous because of the lack of those things, plenty of cities with zoos lack them, it's just something that popped into mind reading SL's last post.

~Thylo

 

Unless your a steak aficionado...

 

Of course not. I'm just pointing out that San Diego is known for more than the zoo and beaches and has great appeal beyond just that.

 

Yet it is not that well known nation wide outside of zoo nerds. Same with Saint Louis and Columbus.

 

I haven't polled a good enough sample to know, but I'm not so sure this is the case. HDZ is Nebraska's top paid-attendance attraction and has about ~2 million annual visitors, which is roughly the entire population of Nebraska. SLZ gets ~3 million annual visitors and is one of the top attractions in its respective city as well. Those numbers indicate major pulling of visitors from outside their metropolitan areas, despite neither city being popular with tourists. Both rank very high in online zoo contests, and HDZ is the #1 ranked zoo on TripAdvisor (or was recently, at least). I also see online advertisements for both of these zoos (and also San Diego) and about a year ago I saw SLZ prominently featured in a TV commercial.

I think Columbus might also be more well-known than the average American zoo because of Jack Hanna, who I think is a bit like the American version of Steve Irwin but not quite as famous.

 

Nah that's Jeff Corwin

~Thylo

 

I'm pretty confident that Henry Doorly doesn't approach San Diego Diego in terms of widespread name recognition. It is certainly very popular within its region though.

 

I do believe I said I personally did not find that this was a legitimate argument against the zoo but that people are free to believe that if they choose.

Rather than seeing this as a flaw that needs fixing, I found this to be one of the best parts of the entire zoo. I think that that outweighs any negatives about the exhibits or paths causing confusion.

 

What are you implying by this? Clearly SDZ is Hereditary, but who’s the Kermode? You? Snowleopard? Are you really implying that everyone criticizing the zoo and pointing out its flaws simply doesn’t understand enough about the zoo, or zoos in general? That’s a rather broad and incriminating statement...

That’s part of some people’s problems with this thread. For instance:

To paraphrase: “if we ignore the bad parts of each category of judgement, then this zoo is the best.” Couldn’t that be said about almost any zoo? While it has

It’s important to not ignore the bad parts of the zoo as well, which a lot of the zoo’s fans tend to do. Are we to accept and ignore the fact that a zoo of this statute keeps its aye-ayes in a corn crib cage, near other cages, in a row of “historically significant” bear grottos that in many cases are little more than mock rock? What about the giraffes, rhinos, and zebras, stars of many zoos, shoved into small, barren pens? To say nothing of the cluster of macaw cages in the Children’s Zoo.

This is a point that isn’t being discussed at present (almost two pages have been added to the thread since I started typing!) but I thought I’d add my own thoughts to it. Sure, the climate has worked in the zoo’s favor. But should our own perceptions of the zoo be changed by that? I think, rather, what we should be looking at is how a particular zoo adapts to its own climate. San Diego is fine for most of the year, but what about when it’s too hot? There aren’t really indoor exhibits or any air conditioned buildings to duck in really, beyond shops and restaurants. Other zoos mentioned in the thread- Bronx and Omaha for example, provide a perfect mix of indoor and outdoor for their climates, year-round. Other southern zoos which I feel are far better adapted include the Texas State Aquarium, San Antonio Zoo, and even Zoo Miami; the latter having both indoor exhibits and air-conditioned transport (monorail).

In my corner of the country, London, New York, and Cincinnati get brought up before San Diego when discussing zoos with my friends. Discussing my upcoming trip to California with friends, I had to name drop San Diego myself for it to be mentioned, and beach time was mentioned over the zoo. So it’s certainly a regional thing.

But does this make San Diego good? Every zoo has a history. The distant history of zoos has little effect on the present. Why should I care if the reptile house was built in 1908 or 2008 (randomly choosing the years of course), as long as the husbandry and exhibits fit modern standards? If we incorporated the past of a zoo like, for example, Omaha, into our perception of it today, would we just blast it down for the crammed Cat Complex white tiger factory it once was? No, we acknowledge that those days (and soon, the Complex itself) are over and look towards the future. But in San Diego, we all seem obsessed with the past. There is no indication any of the bad exhibits I mention are going to be renovated or destroyed anytime soon.

The only kind of lost I want to get in a zoo is like I did Zoo Miami: wandering alone, in an over one-acre large aviary, filled with birds. No boundaries in sight: just lush foliage.

 

"SLZ gets ~3 million annual visitors and is one of the top attractions in its respective city as well. Those numbers indicate major pulling of visitors from outside their metropolitan areas, despite neither city being popular with tourists."

Actually St Louis gets about 26 million yearly visitors

 

I see it as a flaw, but as someone who visits Los Angeles Zoo semi-regularly I can assure everyone that SDZ's layout could be a lot worse Also for whoever said they had to do a lot of backtracking at Saint Louis: I've always found it pretty easy to navigate. The exhibits largely ring around the lakes in the center, so if you just go in a loop (clockwise or counterclockwise) you hit pretty much anything. The only area of the zoo where I end up backtracking a lot is Red Rocks.

 

I assume you mean the city, because the zoo definitely doesn't get 26 million annual visitors. How many of those visitors are tourists, though? The city of St. Louis has a lot of suburbs, so is it counting visitors from within the metropolitan area as well?

Also where did this statistic come from?

 

To respond to Jay...

- It seems like he is suggesting that Thylacine is Kermode.

- I don't think anyone is suggesting to ignore the bad. But no, saying zoo X is the best if you eliminate the bad certainly cannot be said of most any zoo because obviously some zoos have better collections pluses than others.

I also earlier asked how a situation like the giraffes at San Diego Diego should be considered. It's a negative for exhibitry and a plus for collection so how should that add up?

I also think you're overstating the negative of San Diego. For instance, rhinos and zebras do live in exhibits lacking foliage, but their exhibits are not small.

San Diego is not often too hot to need much in the way of indoor buildings. You're right that Henry Doorly and The Bronx have a good mixture of indoor and outdoor exhibits. However, are we going to give them extra credit for keeping certain animals indoors all the time and other animals indoors throughout the winter and part of the neighboring seasons when those indoor exhibits usually are really bad? I actually think we should consider that more when we talk of animal welfare at zoos. It seems that we collectively largely ignore that many zoos keep their elephants, rhinos, hippos, giraffes, gorillas, chimps, etc. in small indoor exhibits for a considerable amount of time each year.

Lastly forgive me, but while I acknowledge that region certainly plays a role in zoo recognition, I'm not really buying that it is that much of a regional thing. I especially don't buy that London is more famous anywhere in this country than San Diego.

 

Oh good lord! No, that’s not at all what was being said. Actually, the total opposite. Hmmmm....

And while @snowleopard is more than capable of speaking for himself, I think you have got completely the wrong end of the stick with him as well. He is not saying “ignore the bad bits“, such as those elements that you gleefully point out in your criticism of the place (such as the aye aye for example); rather, he is suggesting that, on balance, San Diego is not too bad at all. As several wiser heads have mentioned above, no zoo is wholly perfect.