Visting the Dallas Zoo is an awesome experience, and I would have liked to spend 2 full days touring what is a large, immense zoo. However, my wife and very young daughter were with me and 7 hours was more than enough for them! Also, we saw 39 zoos in 46 days on our summer road trip and so I had to be accommodating as I am already an extremely fortunate man.
The African zone of the zoo is superb, from the multi-acre hooftock yards to the massive chimpanzee and gorilla exhibits, and practically everything is well-designed, natural-looking and modern. The brand-new "Giants of the Savanna" is fantastic, and even smaller enclosures such as the ones for Nile crocodiles, mandrills and klipspringer are all borderline brilliant.
Even with all of my plaudits towards the zoo, I'd rank it in the #11 position of the top American zoos. I've seen almost all of the so-called biggest and best in the United States, and there is a lot of variety and excellence. Dallas really needs to build a world-class exhibit complex in the "ZooNorth" section of the zoo, so as to counter-balance the sheer splendour of the African section.
I have been browsing the extensive selection of Dallas Zoo photos you have just uploaded, since I will be going there this weekend. But of the two dozen or so I have looked through so far (mostly from the monorail but a few like this also), I have noticed they all have one thing in common. There are no animals in the pictures. Did you actually see any animals while you were there, or just very nice (but empty) exhibits?
I have been browsing the extensive selection of Dallas Zoo photos you have just uploaded, since I will be going there this weekend. But of the two dozen or so I have looked through so far (mostly from the monorail but a few like this also), I have noticed they all have one thing in common. There are no animals in the pictures. Did you actually see any animals while you were there, or just very nice (but empty) exhibits?
To be honest there are many animal photos that I simply delete and don't bother uploading, as barely anyone looks at them and they will be "purged" in a year anyway. Exhibit shots, on the other hand, are viewed ten times more often than animal photos and thus I concentrate mainly on those. I also prefer exhibit shots myself, as I've seen hundreds of gorillas but each enclosure is unique.
I actually saw the vast majority of animals on my visit, but one complaint that I had with the otherwise outstanding gorilla habitat is that the apes were difficult to see. I have 3 photos of the 3 gorillas, but I saw them all only briefly before they hid from view in either their dayrooms or the thick vegetation. Once the zoo has more gorillas on display (possibly very soon!) then the exhibit might be even more dynamic for visitors.
Yes very soon. They are trying to build up a bachlor group! Now the two younger females have been transfered, and two male from toledo have been brought in. A total of 6-8 gorillas is the goal!
