Great Bear Wilderness - Second Polar Bear Exhibit

I believe what mweb08 means is that reduakari has some of the highest standards of landscape immersion while some of us have the natural vegetation standard of zoo exhibits. Natural vegetation standard meaning that they're fine with the exhibit just being well planted and having lots of vegetation and not so much as hiding fences and anthropogenic objects. Likewise, both reduakari and mweb08 see the same issues and agree on the same points, mweb08 just doesn't take some of the issues into his opinion that this is a good complex.

This is such an improvement from their old exhibit that I can't let minor issues bother me. This is a zoo exhibit so clearly there will be signs of it being a zoo exhibit. That you can see doors, stairs and such is nothing.

Baldur said:

This is such an improvement from their old exhibit that I can't let minor issues bother me. This is a zoo exhibit so clearly there will be signs of it being a zoo exhibit. That you can see doors, stairs and such is nothing.

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Well yes and no
I look and think of what could have been and regret that they settled.
But then again, I feel that way about many exhibits

Otter Lord said:

I believe what mweb08 means is that reduakari has some of the highest standards of landscape immersion while some of us have the natural vegetation standard of zoo exhibits. Natural vegetation standard meaning that they're fine with the exhibit just being well planted and having lots of vegetation and not so much as hiding fences and anthropogenic objects. Likewise, both reduakari and mweb08 see the same issues and agree on the same points, mweb08 just doesn't take some of the issues into his opinion that this is a good complex.

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Yeah, well I do take those issues into consideration, just don't weigh them as high as he does. Plus, again, I didn't say the exhibit is great, just that it's good. Taking care of the things reduakari mentions plus having more space and so forth would make it much better obviously.

Baldur said:

This is such an improvement from their old exhibit that I can't let minor issues bother me. This is a zoo exhibit so clearly there will be signs of it being a zoo exhibit. That you can see doors, stairs and such is nothing.

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Just to take this discussion a little further---if a zoo is spending millions of dollars to enclose an animal exhibit using artificial rock in an effort to emulate a "natural" environment.....but then makes easily-avoided mistakes that highlight the artificiality of it all (like doors, stairs, untreated concrete moats, waterfalls coming out of nowhere etc.), not only is it a missed opportunity, but it really begins to be a total waste. Why not then just use "honest" (and much more inexpensive) concrete walls or chainlink fencing?

Great Bear Wilderness is not a bad exhibit, but it really could have been so much better with a number of better design decisions.

I agree that they could have done better with the things you mention. However, the rock work looks much better than concrete walls or chainlink fencing, and most people either won't notice much of what you're talking about, or won't care much, if at all.