Aside from the fact that Wildlands had to replace a much loved zoo and the large number of errors that were made in the first years, there are enough reasons to be critical of the current Wildlands.
The first is the animal collection, which is minimal for such a large zoo, especially when one sees all the available space that sits unused. The collection they do have is very ABC-focused and aside from the two greenhouses and the tiny unfitting aquarium extremely mammal-focused.
But more importantly is the poor landscaping throughout the zoo and the theming, which I personally find bad.
The enclosures are almost without exception spacious and mostly well-suited for their inhabitants. But design-wise quite full of flaws. For example, that there is only one larger indoor and outdoor enclosure for the Elephants is weird and both are very narrow and barren and are dominated by strange rock formations. Not a pretty sight and not optimal in terms of enrichment, shade and separation options.
For a zoo that aims at transporting visitors to the wild, there is far too much crossviewing, so visitors can often be seen from any given viewpoint. The golf court savanna and elephant outdoor enclosure are good examples. Apart from visible visitors, zoo structures are also very obvious, like the separation cages in Jungola or all the other theme worlds or exhibit barriers that one can see because there was only a half-hearted attempt at immersion. For example the lion enclosure hill is exactly to low to hide the jungola greenhouse, destroying any illusion of depth. With Burgers' Zoo and Gaiazoo, as well as nearby Hannover there are some good examples closeby on how to do landscape effectively and avoid cross-viewing.
What I personally find very annoying is the theming. When going for a nature/wild experience one should either opt for the naturalistix/realistic way of Burgers' or Zürich where replicating the natural habitat with a bit of authentic cultural theming present is the main goal. The other option is the way of Pairi Daiza where one heavily focuses on authentic cultural theming that is faithful to the region it aims to represent. Wildlands created a difficult job for itself by going for a biome without a specific geographic location. That this means that the whole jungle zone is a bunch of tropical generic ruins and bamboo and no substance is not very nice imo, but at least effective in some ways. The real eyesore for me is Serenga, which has a heavy African theme, meaning an overload of Afrikaans, some tribal references and 0 substance. That really is a painful caricature of Africa for someone who has worked on that continent for quite a while. The only convincing and well executed part for me was the W-African children's zoo, which is faithful to a specific architecturd. The Arctic area to me is just a bad copy of Yukon Bay in Hannover.
And to be honest education and the conservation message on expects of such a zoo are a joke or in some cases almost completely lacking. There is quite some effort put in the theming of the education material, but it did not convince me at all.
Does that make Wildlands a bad zoo, no. But there are quite a number of better zoos in the Netherlands that have a more convincing story and a better execution of their ideas. Wildlands created a really high bar for themselves and fail to meet said bar spectacularly, but not unexpectedly. I personally think that with half the cost one could have transformed the old zoo in something much better than Wildlands is now...
The first is the animal collection, which is minimal for such a large zoo, especially when one sees all the available space that sits unused. The collection they do have is very ABC-focused and aside from the two greenhouses and the tiny unfitting aquarium extremely mammal-focused.
But more importantly is the poor landscaping throughout the zoo and the theming, which I personally find bad.
The enclosures are almost without exception spacious and mostly well-suited for their inhabitants. But design-wise quite full of flaws. For example, that there is only one larger indoor and outdoor enclosure for the Elephants is weird and both are very narrow and barren and are dominated by strange rock formations. Not a pretty sight and not optimal in terms of enrichment, shade and separation options.
For a zoo that aims at transporting visitors to the wild, there is far too much crossviewing, so visitors can often be seen from any given viewpoint. The golf court savanna and elephant outdoor enclosure are good examples. Apart from visible visitors, zoo structures are also very obvious, like the separation cages in Jungola or all the other theme worlds or exhibit barriers that one can see because there was only a half-hearted attempt at immersion. For example the lion enclosure hill is exactly to low to hide the jungola greenhouse, destroying any illusion of depth. With Burgers' Zoo and Gaiazoo, as well as nearby Hannover there are some good examples closeby on how to do landscape effectively and avoid cross-viewing.
What I personally find very annoying is the theming. When going for a nature/wild experience one should either opt for the naturalistix/realistic way of Burgers' or Zürich where replicating the natural habitat with a bit of authentic cultural theming present is the main goal. The other option is the way of Pairi Daiza where one heavily focuses on authentic cultural theming that is faithful to the region it aims to represent. Wildlands created a difficult job for itself by going for a biome without a specific geographic location. That this means that the whole jungle zone is a bunch of tropical generic ruins and bamboo and no substance is not very nice imo, but at least effective in some ways. The real eyesore for me is Serenga, which has a heavy African theme, meaning an overload of Afrikaans, some tribal references and 0 substance. That really is a painful caricature of Africa for someone who has worked on that continent for quite a while. The only convincing and well executed part for me was the W-African children's zoo, which is faithful to a specific architecturd. The Arctic area to me is just a bad copy of Yukon Bay in Hannover.
And to be honest education and the conservation message on expects of such a zoo are a joke or in some cases almost completely lacking. There is quite some effort put in the theming of the education material, but it did not convince me at all.
Does that make Wildlands a bad zoo, no. But there are quite a number of better zoos in the Netherlands that have a more convincing story and a better execution of their ideas. Wildlands created a really high bar for themselves and fail to meet said bar spectacularly, but not unexpectedly. I personally think that with half the cost one could have transformed the old zoo in something much better than Wildlands is now...
