Did you see any crazy keepers go in with the lions? Here is a brief excerpt from my 2015 road trip thread:
With only 7 exhibits it didn’t take me long to finish touring this zoo but I hung around for a while because two of the keepers went into the white lion enclosure and rolled big boomer balls around the exhibit. I watched them for a number of minutes as it seemed incredibly dangerous to me but the guys inside the enclosure appeared calm and easy-going with the cats. When I watched the 4 keepers go in with a white tiger at Out of Africa at least they held balloons to distract the cat and it was a 4 to 1 ratio of people to tiger. Today there were the two keepers but they had nothing in their hands and I watched the 3 younger lions eye them and tense when the men came closer with the boomer balls. Being in with 3 lions at the same time is an enormous risk because it would only take a few seconds to turn one of the men into a paraplegic or worse. Why take the chance?