Do You Have To See The Whole Zoo?

If visiting a new zoo:

If visiting a new zoo, my preference is to see every species and every exhibit. I will even revisit some of my favourite exhibits - in case there’s something I missed; or to see different behaviours.

However…

If my choices are see part of the zoo or see none of the zoo, I would choose to see some of the zoo, prioritising species I’ve never seen before or my favourite species.

If visiting a zoo I’ve been to before:

If I’ve visited that zoo before, I happily skip parts that are of less interest to me. Auckland zoo charge for parking now (if visiting for more than three hours) and in any case, three hours is the upper limit of tolerance for my family or friends; so of the five precincts, I always visit South East Asia and Africa and then choose one of the following: New Zealand, Australia or South America based on which I haven’t seen for the longest.
 
Part of it depends on the size of the zoo. As a regular visitor to the very large San Diego zoos and the Los Angeles zoo, I definitely have a circuit of things that I want to see, and frequently skip parts of the zoos. A small or medium sized zoo, I am more likely to visit the whole thing.
 
I typically only visit zoos for two to three hours at a time, which is also the case for other types of attractions like museums. However, I do in-depth observations of the sections I visit and go repeatedly until I eventually see everything. For instance, as a member of the Los Angeles Zoo, I usually try to go on weekdays for the last few hours of the day as it tends to be uncrowded and gives better light for photography. Over the course of a year, all these short visits add up to a significant amount of time. I've been keeping track of all my trips to the zoo for the past 12 months and it comes to about 38 hours! If I were traveling to go to a big zoo I wouldn't otherwise have the chance to see, I would probably only want to spend four to five hours max in one day as it does get tiring walking around crowded areas.
 
On my best and most complete Bronx Zoo visit, in which I stayed from 10 to 5, I still missed Butterfly Garden and the Mouse House. Granted, I had laid out a plan of which exhibits to see and in which order, and I had left some out, but even then I still managed to squeeze in some others that weren’t on the list. I’d like to think that I made the right choice if I had to skip anything, because I’d much rather make time for World of Birds than the Mouse House.

But if a zoo isn’t gigantic, like Bronx, then I do still aim to see the whole zoo, if only because it’s manageable.
 
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When we go to a zoo we've never been before, or haven't been in a long time, then yes.
Want my moneys worth, so I wanna see it all, hehe (and just see it all regardless).
And I'm not great at walking/being on my feet all day, so we do try to get there at opening, and staying until it closes, so I don't have to rush to see it all in a new place.
We couldn't see Chester zoo completely in one go, so we just got an annual pass, haha, been 8 times now since last year July, so it's all good.

Zoo's we go to more often or have passes for, I will skip quite a lot and just go to the bits that are my favorite (or back and forth to favorite bits for a few hours).
 
While I strongly prefer seeing the whole thing, I don't think I'd say no to a partial visit if it's that or nothing. It's not unusual for me to do that in my most-frequented zoos, pop in for an hour or so to kill time and check in on just my most favorite animals. But even for a new or less familiar zoo, it might be a bit bittersweet, but I think I'd still prefer getting a chance to check off some new life listers or see some neat new exhibits than nothing at all. If anything, that'll probably give me more reason to prioritize a revisit than anything.
 
birdsandbats said:
Recently I was near Brookfield Zoo with my family for non-zoo related reasons, doing other things, and my family, knowing I like zoos, suggested we stop in at Brookfield for a couple hours when we had some time. I told them that I wasn't really interested because a couple hours is not enough time to see the entire zoo. They thought I was crazy for this opinion and fundamentally did not understand why I would rather skip out on the zoo then not see all of it. They felt that some zoo must be better than no zoo. But I disagree.

Upon reflection, these are the reasons I think I feel this way:

-A zoo is only done "properly" if most or all of the facility is seen, and I did not want to visit the zoo "improperly".
-Having limited time at a zoo would require prioritizing certain animals over others, and making the choice of seeing certain animals over others would drive me crazy.

Of course, I don't literally insist on visiting every part of a zoo every time I go. I will occasionally skip areas that only have domestic animals or areas with an extra fee.

I regularly skip exhibits at my most visited zoo, Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary, which I average about one a visit a month too. But pretty much other zoos, even ones I visit multiple times a year, I do insist on seeing the entire zoo when I'm there, with occasional exceptions as noted above.

Does anyone else feel this way? Why or why not?
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I try to see the whole zoo as well. I use to skip children's zoo/domestic animal areas but have since developed an interest in domestics especially rare breeds. If I'm short on time I make sure I see the herp areas, live insect , and aquarium if they have it. I also try to see the primate exhibits. If the zoo has live animal demonstrations especially birds shows I try to catch those too.
 
If I don't get to see a zoo in its entirety, there's stuff I'm obviously going to miss out on. When I miss out on certain parts of a zoo, I feel like I can't properly rate a zoo to the fullest extent that I need to. I don't want to judge a zoo when I haven't even gotten to enjoy the whole thing. Then there's also species that could be missed. Of course, all the bigger stuff will be found on websites/maps, and can be prioritized easily, but smaller rarities would go completely missed.
 
DCzootripper said:
I have been to many zoos in my childhood, and if I didn't see all the exhibits, I would cry. so my answer is YES.
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This was me as a child too, but my parents taught me you can’t everything you want in life, and so I had to get used to not being able to see the whole zoo in the same visit. But anyways, I would much rather only see part of a zoo than miss it entirely. If I am short on time for a visit, I will prioritize seeing the animals I am the most excited about viewing (and photographing). For example, last December I only had about three hours to spend at the Bronx Zoo, so I prioritized seeing the animals I haven’t seen in many zoos (little penguins, geladas, ring-tailed vontsira and even made time to make three trips to the dhole exhibit).
 
Like other forum members have mentioned here, I'll want to see an entire zoo if it's a new place to me.

At my local zoo, if I'm pressed for time, or the weather is really bad, I'll stick with my favourite exhibits.
 
It’s usually always all or nothing for me, even for zoos I visit very frequently like the Minnesota Zoo kys Como Zoo. A zoo visit just never feels complete without seeing everything the zoo has to offer, and I always want to be on top of any possible new additions or updates that would otherwise go unnoticed if I skipped an area. The main exception to this is domestic-only exhibits or children’s zoos, which I usually skip if I have either been to the zoo before or run out of time. For example, I ended up skipping the Children’s Adventure Trails at Omaha 2021 because other than prairie dogs; all of the animals were domestic or semi-domestic. I probably would have gone through if I had time, but I only had ~30 minutes left and I still hadn’t seen KotN or the Desert Dome yet, so I decided to skip it.
A similar thing happened when I visited Brookfield over spring break, as the Hamill Family Play Zoo closed just before I was about to enter. I wasn’t too disappointed though, as the building only had species I’d already seen before and I had already been through the building the last time I visited in 2015:
 
I feel that I am about to contradict myself a lot.

In general as a zoo visitor, I like to take my time and I like to linger. What is considered a two hour zoo on zoochat is often three or more hours for me. Lincoln Park is my home zoo and I will sometimes spend double there what is necessary for a first time visitor and still miss one or two exhibits. The extra time will be spent watching various primates or pygmy loris or lion cubs or pygmy hippopotamus or polar bear (or whatever is active and interesting) a bit longer - rarely any one thing, of course, but you get the idea.

At my home zoos I don't mind skipping exhibits, but still try to hit everywhere. Lincoln Park I made multiple two-hour visits last year where I only covered two-thirds of the facility, for the sake of going out and being somewhere I enjoy. During these visits I would often prioritize a certain favorite species and see what I could do in the surrounding area. I usually try to cover all of Brookfield on a visit too, but I very often skipped the Salt Creek Wilderness (and thus miss the stork and additional okapi exhibit) the upcharge attractions (I think I set foot in the Play Zoo once between the early 2010s and 2022) and often one of the bird/reptile buildings gets skipped. It's only Lincoln Park though where this is guilt-free since it's so accessible to me.

But visiting a new zoo for the first time, of course I want to see everything.

In addition, on three separate occasions where I visited a new zoo for the first time, I revisited the next day to cover exhibits missed on the first day. I went back to Saint Louis the following day to visit the Cypress Aviary and Red Rocks (which had been closing when I reached it the previous day) and back to the National Zoo to see the pandas again and finally, I went to London three times in a week, two days of which contributed to one full visit and the last for a full visit in a day, giving me two chances to see everything but the reptile exhibit and Blackburn Pavilion (once each)

I will say though, when I visited Chester in April, I made an effort to see everything, and I came extremely close to succeeding -- but by rushing exhibits and not lingering anywhere, the visit feels a lot like a dream and my memories of a lot of exhibits feel a little shaky without going back over my photographs. A lot of 'glance and run'. I desperately regret not sticking to the plan to see it over two days, but other plans on my agenda got jiggered around that branch of the trip. I am restless to return someday.
 
When I visited the Bronx Zoo a few years back for the first time, we had to skip several exhibits due to time constraints (and the fact that we didn’t want to be in one of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the Bronx after nightfall). In most of the zoos that I’ve been to, time constraints aren’t a problem, but it does bug me that skipping a few animal attractions is generally on the agenda when we visit theme parks such as DAK in order to get a head start on the rides.
 
if time constraints are not a problem, il want to preferably see the entire thing and otherwise consider the veiwing incomplete and undesirable
 
I agree with many of the things said here already and largely going to repeat some as I have the same general thoughts. In general, I would not plan (emphasis on me planning the visit) a zoo visit where I thought there was a remote possibility of me not being able to see the entire zoo during my visit. I would also be very unlikely to say yes to a type of visit that you describe here IF it would be my first time visiting that zoo as I feel I could not get a good representation of that zoo AND it would also probably somewhat taint a return visit in which I did see the entire facility in terms of the "first time experience".

That being said, knowing you have been to Brookfield before (like myself), I would have likely said yes in the situation that you described, especially if someone else is paying for me. I would definitely prioritize anything that was "new" since my last visit and the "signature exhibits/species" and be disappointed that I could not have seen the entire zoo, but I would definitely still go.
 
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