It really bothers me to no end that the zoo failed to hide or at the very least obscure the holding building for the animals. The public sees a large concrete block with bars in the window, and it is in a prominent position. That would never happen at a zoo like Woodland Park, where most of the time it is impossible to even see moats, bars or fences....let alone the night-quarters of a particular group of animals. Sheer laziness and lack of imagination.
Maybe San Diego has been converted to the "British home-made" style of zoo design? This actually makes the tapir exhibit at RSCC look good! What message this random assortment of stuff is supposed to convey is beyond me. Awful....
I'm sure I don't need to point out the the RSCC tapir enclosure wasn't built as part of a development costing $45m...
I have to agree with snowleopard about the lack of imagination in the night quarters - they don't need to hide it but don't build a house how you'd build it if it were hidden if its not going to be hidden! They knew it was going to be visible so I'm surprised they came up with something so frankly rubbish-looking.
As I understand it, the random assortment of species in EO is meant to be representatives of animal groups that historically/prehistorically inhabited Southern California - I think this is one of those themes that seemed like a good idea at the time. The reason why most multi-species animal exhibits are either taxonomic ('Ape House'), geographic ('South American paddock') or biotypic ('Rainforest House') is that these are fairly intuitive concepts to visitors. I don't want to criticise too heavily without having visited, but it seems to me that EO's concept is a bit of a tricky one to convey.
The multiple comments about Elephant Odyssey are extremely interesting, and I think that it boils down to 2 things:
1- The San Diego Zoo is one of the best zoos on the planet, and even its detractors rank it in the top 10 worldwide. Thus the level of expectation is considerably higher than many other establishments, and Elephant Odyssey appears to fail far more than it delivers in terms of overall quality.
2- The price tag. A zoo spends $45 million, which is an obscene amount of money for what has been accomplished with that money. I personally feel the same way about the almost $20 millon the Los Angeles Zoo spent on its gorillas. With the dollar figures being tossed around I expect masterpieces and I am left looking at photos of mud.
