The American Wilderness Zoo & Aquarium opened in 1997 at the Ontario Mills Mall, east of Los Angeles, by Odgen Entertainment. It was filled with small animal exhibits and artificial landscapes in 35,000 sq ft of the mall. Originally, Odgen had plans to open others, but the original never prospered as the company had hoped and closed in 2000. American Wilderness Experience: The world’s first and last zoo in a mall Did anyone ever visit while it was open? McBride Co. - Attractions - American Wilderness Experience Wilderness at Ontario Mills cutting prices And this was not the only mall zoo/aquarium...there is currently one in Utah called the Living Planet Aquarium http://www.zoochat.com/22/living-planet-aquarium-51143/
There was one of these planned for the Arizona Mills mall in Phoenix too, but they only ever built the gift shop and never got around to the animal displays. About Living Planet: I thought they moved from the mall in Murray to their current location in Sandy. Is that a mall too? Guess I'll have to check it out when things thaw out around these parts.
Im not sure about the Sandy location, if Living Planet is in an actual mall....but it still has the same design.
I did a little research, and the original preview exhibit was in the Gateway Mall and consisted of 10,000 sf. They moved to a 43,000 sf building in Sandy due to overwhelming attendance. Their eventual goal is to build a full-sized world-class aquarium somewhere in the Salt Lake area. I haven't been, but I do intend on checking it out either this spring or summer. I'll post a review.
There is also an excellent aquarium, Underwater Adventures Aquarium, in Minnesota's Mall of America. Underwater Adventures Aquarium Canada's even-larger West Edomonton Mall has a smaller aquarium, Sea Life Caverns: Sea Life Caverns - West Edmonton Mall Just north of Chicago, the Gurnee Mills mall has a small indoor reptile zoo called Serpent Safari. At one time they claimed to have the world's largest snake (and it was in Guiness World records book).
We visited the American Wilderness Experience at Ontario Mills on 3/11/1999. It was divided into five exhibit areas: Pacific Shore, Redwood Forest, High Sierras, Mojave Desert, and Yosemite Valley. I thought it was a very good idea ( Mall Zoo), but apparently not enough people thought so. Went back in 2002 and it was gone.
Not a zoo in a mall exactly but along those lines. A Gorilla Sulks in a Mall as His Future Is Debated - NYTimes.com
Obviously aquariums in malls are more common - a new Sea Life opened here in Tempe/Phoenix this summer at the Arizona Mills mall (the same mall that was going to house another American Wilderness Experience but never did). Yes, I actually did visit this zoo in the Ontario Mills, I think I was there the year it opened. I am surprised the only other person on this post who actually visited said they liked it. I thought it was absolutely awful. I remember two seals in a small tank with maybe a tiny strip of bare cement against the water and the wall as the only land - barely wide enough for them to get out on. I remember a bobcat in a small glass tank with a painted background (similar to the awful cat houses at Cincinnati or Denver). I remember a staff guy bringing out an opposum (I think) in a very small demonstration area - he just walks out of a closed door and is right there - very weird. I remember a very bumpy motion simulator ride that was supposed to be you inside the head of a cougar or cheetah (I forget which) chasing something - very bumpy and unrealistic and uncomfortable. I don't really remember anything else - couldn't even tell you what animals they had. All I can say is closing this place down was one of the greatest moments in American zoo history.
Personally I think aquariums and reptile displays are ok inside a mall if the animals have enough space, but that's about it. I think a very very large mall could have a mini walk-through rainforest inside of it, but it would only house free-ranging small animals and maybe a few glass-fronted exhibits for nocturnal animals or reptiles. I would want it to be separated from the rest of the mall, though.
Well, maybe you're right. I mean, if they could probably separate "The Tropics" indoor rainforest zoo from the mall like, you know, maybe Sawgrass Mills or Ontario Mills.
Don't know if anyone has brought this up, but at the Dubai Mall (the world's biggest mall, in the United Arab Emirates), right in the middle of it is the Dubai Aquarium and Indoor Zoo. It includes an enormously wide 3-story-tall window into their main Ocean aquarium. The window is in the walkway of the mall, so it's free to all mall customers and it's very popular. If you choose to pay to enter the Aquarium, there is a glass tube through this million-gallon tank, plus an upstairs gallery with many smaller tanks, otters, nutrias, archerfish, penguins, sharks, and much more.
Not to pull this thread off topic, but this seems like a ready-made plot for a movie. During the Christmas shopping season, the largest mall crowd of the year is trapped inside the mall by the worst freak blizzard of the century. Everything is fine until the reptile keeper discovers that someone has liberated the world's largest snake and all of his venomous friends.... When you are done with the next revision of your book ANyhuis, please get right to work on the screenplay for "Snakes in the Mall".
I went to the Serpent Safari a couple of years ago and it was interesting. I say that because there was a great variety of reptiles present. If I remember correctly, many of the exhibits were decent and held some animals I had never seen before. There were many albino reptiles including iguanas. Some aspects were not very positive though. For instance, there was a nile crocodile in a very small tank and we were told that for the keepers to feed, they drop in food in from above because apparently it had a nasty history (in the tour it was considered a man eater). They also thrive on commercialization as for a modest fee, one could hold any number of reptiles for a picture. Another negatives include that to view the rare and larger reptiles, one had to purchase a tour which walked you through the exhibit area rather swiftly (I couldn't get many pictures) and there was not much information about the species shown, just how dangerous they were. Serpent Safari, as much as I remember, was more of an exotic reptile pet shop and just had some larger reptiles to help draw people in. This thread reminded me of the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery. This is a children's museum near Dayton, Ohio that has a zoo inside. It has river otters, meerkats, a bobcat, several species of birds, reptiles, and other small mammals. I felt that the "Discovery Zoo" was kind of cramped and some of the exhibits seemed small and lacked any sort of natural enrichment.
