Twycross Zoo New Membership fees for 2025

sloggervlogger

sloggervlogger

Well-Known Member
10+ year member
So Twycross Zoo announces new Membership plans. £190 for a Conservation Membership! You'll get
  • 12-months entry to Twycross Zoo, without the need to reserve
  • 1 x FREE child on every visit OR a £50 Zoo Voucher to spend how you choose*
  • 1 x FREE members-only early bird tour
  • Exclusive Conservation Membership events
  • Conservation Member Car Sticker
  • 1 x FREE ticket to our brand-new Winter Experience… announced soon!
  • Discounts & first access to special event tickets
  • FREE car parking on every visit
  • Access to partner zoos
  • 20% discount on food, drink & gift shops
  • 50% off soft play
Annual Pass Plus :

From £42.25 per adult & £31.45 per child when you book online in advance
Ideal for families and frequent visitors who want a little bit more. Upgrade to our new Annual Pass Plus to unlock exciting benefits, including...

  • FREE parking for up to 5 visits per adult (Saving £3 each time!)
  • Same day reservations for spontaneous adventures
  • FREE access to Zoo Crew Champions for all kids (worth £19.99 each)
  • 50% discount on soft play
  • 10% off food, drinks & gift shops
What are your thoughts?
 
sloggervlogger said:
So Twycross Zoo announces new Membership plans. £190 for a Conservation Membership! You'll get
  • 12-months entry to Twycross Zoo, without the need to reserve
  • 1 x FREE child on every visit OR a £50 Zoo Voucher to spend how you choose*
  • 1 x FREE members-only early bird tour
  • Exclusive Conservation Membership events
  • Conservation Member Car Sticker
  • 1 x FREE ticket to our brand-new Winter Experience… announced soon!
  • Discounts & first access to special event tickets
  • FREE car parking on every visit
  • Access to partner zoos
  • 20% discount on food, drink & gift shops
  • 50% off soft play
Annual Pass Plus :

From £42.25 per adult & £31.45 per child when you book online in advance
Ideal for families and frequent visitors who want a little bit more. Upgrade to our new Annual Pass Plus to unlock exciting benefits, including...

  • FREE parking for up to 5 visits per adult (Saving £3 each time!)
  • Same day reservations for spontaneous adventures
  • FREE access to Zoo Crew Champions for all kids (worth £19.99 each)
  • 50% discount on soft play
  • 10% off food, drinks & gift shops
What are your thoughts?
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A-bit shocking we used to do the full membership but didn’t renew this yr I was thinking about renewing but certainly not at that price I don’t need a kids ticket or soft play quite a hike !
 
sloggervlogger said:
So Twycross Zoo announces new Membership plans. £190 for a Conservation Membership! You'll get
  • 12-months entry to Twycross Zoo, without the need to reserve
  • 1 x FREE child on every visit OR a £50 Zoo Voucher to spend how you choose*
  • 1 x FREE members-only early bird tour
  • Exclusive Conservation Membership events
  • Conservation Member Car Sticker
  • 1 x FREE ticket to our brand-new Winter Experience… announced soon!
  • Discounts & first access to special event tickets
  • FREE car parking on every visit
  • Access to partner zoos
  • 20% discount on food, drink & gift shops
  • 50% off soft play
Annual Pass Plus :

From £42.25 per adult & £31.45 per child when you book online in advance
Ideal for families and frequent visitors who want a little bit more. Upgrade to our new Annual Pass Plus to unlock exciting benefits, including...

  • FREE parking for up to 5 visits per adult (Saving £3 each time!)
  • Same day reservations for spontaneous adventures
  • FREE access to Zoo Crew Champions for all kids (worth £19.99 each)
  • 50% discount on soft play
  • 10% off food, drinks & gift shops
What are your thoughts?
Click to expand...
It’s not a popular decision on the zoos social media! And I understand why people are mad. Everyone knows how the car park needs improvements but I don’t believe they should be charging £3 a visit.

It would have been easier if they didn’t change to have all of these different type of memberships. I think the old system was better than all of these different types. It used to be just the Annual Membership and Day Ticket and it worked well.

Some of these “discounts” are useless for certain members who mainly go to the zoo for a few hours to get out of the house. Twycross also said they would host “Conservation Events” last year but I don’t remember any happening… another pointless benefit.
 
If the zoo were to introduce this after 2026 once the NSCC was constructed I’d understand as there is more to see. But for a regular visitor who calls a lemur a llama (have heard this before) there isn’t much to see. A staff member last year told me the average visitor spends between 2-4 hours at Twycross because there isn’t a lot to see for a none-zoo person. Sure the zoo has giraffes, rhinos, tigers etc but that’s not enough when the Tigers are always hiding (which isn’t popular with visitors) I still hear people at the zoo say “they’ve only got monkeys” because the only new major species they’ve added last year was four species of primate.
 
I completely agree with the comment about the membership discounts. We were promised a lot of perks last time, including newsletters, early entry, and special events, but none of these materialised. What gets me the most, though, is that they’re still offering free entry with the standard ticket, while charging loyal members so much more just to get the same benefits they enjoyed before. If the £50 zoo voucher could be applied to the membership cost for members without children, it might make it a tiny bit more bearable for some.
 
Their £190 membership seems really very high compared to many other zoos though the lower £90 one with free parking seems more reasonable if you visit a lot (around 4 adult tickets equivalent). The pre booking thing is a vexation for some but it always seems busy as a zoo so I guess they manage the numbers that way.

I thought their day ticket prices are on the high side but I use another zoos membership to visit on the reciprocal agreement which is better value as a one off. I’ve found it busy and I only visit occasionally off peak so people locally obviously have more money than in some other areas.

Introducing a car park charge is never popular - if they’d always charged £10 and made it £11 no one would really care but making it £3 from free is always painted as infringing someone’s rights. If they want to do the works on what is a poor car park in reality then money has to come from somewhere.

I expect people will still visit but it’s up there with the premium zoo prices and I’d argue it’s not one of those zoos at the moment though it has the apes and primate collection and some nice rarities. I’d put a bet on it still being busy though.
 
If your not interested in the discounts on the membership, might as well get the Colchester pass @ £72.50 first year the £58 renewal it gives all year access to Twycross with out booking and all the other zoo entries Twycross does. On another note will be interesting to see how they implement car park charges given the traffic chaos that can happen in the summer I don’t think a barrier system at the gate would help !
 
I hope they've got an efficient system worked out for collecting the parking charges and admitting cars -waiting in a long queue of cars to pay to get into a (currently still poor) car park isn't the best start to any zoo visit.

Also have some concerns about numpties parking on road outside the zoo to save £3.
 
sloggervlogger said:
So Twycross Zoo announces new Membership plans. £190 for a Conservation Membership! You'll get
  • 12-months entry to Twycross Zoo, without the need to reserve
  • 1 x FREE child on every visit OR a £50 Zoo Voucher to spend how you choose*
  • 1 x FREE members-only early bird tour
  • Exclusive Conservation Membership events
  • Conservation Member Car Sticker
  • 1 x FREE ticket to our brand-new Winter Experience… announced soon!
  • Discounts & first access to special event tickets
  • FREE car parking on every visit
  • Access to partner zoos
  • 20% discount on food, drink & gift shops
  • 50% off soft play
Annual Pass Plus :

From £42.25 per adult & £31.45 per child when you book online in advance
Ideal for families and frequent visitors who want a little bit more. Upgrade to our new Annual Pass Plus to unlock exciting benefits, including...

  • FREE parking for up to 5 visits per adult (Saving £3 each time!)
  • Same day reservations for spontaneous adventures
  • FREE access to Zoo Crew Champions for all kids (worth £19.99 each)
  • 50% discount on soft play
  • 10% off food, drinks & gift shops
What are your thoughts?
Click to expand...
That does seem a heck of a price ramp! Thankfully I upgraded to a membership very recently so I'll get extra benefits at the old price, but I can't see many people going for the new membership unless they visit a lot. The carpark is awful, I still think my last puncture was from there, but that is a big step from it being free.
 
A.L. Gardner said:
That does seem a heck of a price ramp! Thankfully I upgraded to a membership very recently so I'll get extra benefits at the old price, but I can't see many people going for the new membership unless they visit a lot. The carpark is awful, I still think my last puncture was from there, but that is a big step from it being free.
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Same here, I just renewed my membership, so I’ve got a bit more time to process it all. It’s shocking that it’s now more expensive than Chester Zoo for essentially the same main perks. To put it in perspective, Chester Zoo has over 500 species and around 35,000 animals, while Twycross has around 100 species and approximately 400 animals.
I get the need for a parking fee since the car park desperately needed redoing, but charging for it before any improvements have even been made…
 
sloggervlogger said:
Same here, I just renewed my membership, so I’ve got a bit more time to process it all. It’s shocking that it’s now more expensive than Chester Zoo for essentially the same main perks. To put it in perspective, Chester Zoo has over 500 species and around 35,000 animals, while Twycross has around 100 species and approximately 400 animals.
I get the need for a parking fee since the car park desperately needed redoing, but charging for it before any improvements have even been made…
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And the other thing with parking is that you apparently have to pre-book it. I wonder how that will work in practice—I foresee some trouble there.
 
Shorts said:
I hope they've got an efficient system worked out for collecting the parking charges and admitting cars -waiting in a long queue of cars to pay to get into a (currently still poor) car park isn't the best start to any zoo visit.

Also have some concerns about numpties parking on road outside the zoo to save £3.
Click to expand...

Thinking about it, it's probable they'll charge on exit (they were doing some road/ground works, on the the exit route, on Sunday) like Dudley but, given the far higher visitor numbers, it remains to be seen whether that will still cause pinch points....
 
sloggervlogger said:
And the other thing with parking is that you apparently have to pre-book it. I wonder how that will work in practice—I foresee some trouble there.
Click to expand...
Yes, I was assuming that members didn't have to pre-book parking as it's free for us. I did wonder about their certaiin loss of revenue from the annual pass scheme, this seems to be their way of clawing some money back.
 
A.L. Gardner said:
Yes, I was assuming that members didn't have to pre-book parking as it's free for us. I did wonder about their certaiin loss of revenue from the annual pass scheme, this seems to be their way of clawing some money back.
Click to expand...
What are you doing up this early? lol I thought I was the only one awake at this unsavoury hour! I'm sure I read somewhere that members with free parking still need to pre-book, but I just had another look and can't find it. So either I'm going mad or blind. I'm sure we'll find out more soon about how it's all supposed to work.
 
sloggervlogger said:
What are you doing up this early? lol I thought I was the only one awake at this unsavoury hour! I'm sure I read somewhere that members with free parking still need to pre-book, but I just had another look and can't find it. So either I'm going mad or blind. I'm sure we'll find out more soon about how it's all supposed to work.
Click to expand...
Parking, it says "Existing Annual Ticket holders will not be required to pay parking costs until 5 April 2025, but will be required to reserve these free spaces when pre-booking their visit online. This will appear as part your pre-booking journey." So I guess members aren't included in that and don't need to pre-book hopefully.
 
Freezing admission prices and then adding a parking charge is raising admission prices, it’s just two transactions instead of one. Stupid, unfair and bloody embarrassing.
 
TriUK said:
Freezing admission prices and then adding a parking charge is raising admission prices, it’s just two transactions instead of one. Stupid, unfair and bloody embarrassing.
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I think its rather insulting frankly. After decades of the usual free parking, now paying to park on their own land and then paying again to enter the zoo. Plus more of the wretched 'pre-booking' is bound to create more problems. I would rather have seen them simply add it to the admission price if they have to. I don't know any other UK zoos that charge for parking, except for Dudley and that is different as afaik the car park is on land that isn't theirs. Or maybe Whipsnade? Or it did? Again like Dudley the carpark is owned by someone else isn't it? But I just checked and its certainly free nowadays. But other examples of Zoos that do charge I'd be interested to hear of.
 
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