I visited Blackpool Zoo for the first as an adult on 5th July, previous visit as a child must have been over 20 years ago. I couldn't really remember anything from that visit so I was treating it like a first time visit. To be honest I didn't really know what to expect from Blackpool, and although we had very few no shows, I left feeling a little disappointed.
A lot of the enclosures in the zoo look dated, with many enclosures smaller than they should be in my opinion. The big cat enclosures were particularly poor, with small cramped indoors and very little to keep them occupied on the outside. The female Tiger actually looked quite thin, I'm not sure if she is unwell but she certainly didn't look healthy.
The Giraffe enclosure was another area that didn't look sufficient at all, again with little space indoors and not a particularly large paddock outside. Also signage advised the Giraffe are not part of a breeding programme, are they all hybrids? One of the females was exhibiting very repetitive behaviour, not nice to witness at all.
The indoor Ape House was another space that just didn't look big enough. The Gorilla's outside area looked quite large, but the Orang's only have access to a small outdoor area with a climbing frame, again looking dated.
On a positive note, the Sealion enclosure is one of the best I've seen for the species, very large pool and looked well designed. The new Elephant enclosure also looked good, not as spacious as I thought it was going to be from the marketing but still a good sized enclosure.
The zoo overall was very clean and tidy, with plenty of hand sanitising stations and visitors generally sticking to all the current guidance which makes for a much nicer visit.
I don't want to be overly critical of Blackpool, we did enjoy our visit and as I said, seen pretty much everything, I just think there are a lot of areas where improvements are needed, hopefully these will come soon.
