I have a question about the park in general if anybody knows answer. Why was it renamed the San Diego Safari Park? It was the San Diego Wild Animal Park when I visited in 2009. Does anybody know why or when it was renamed?
I have a question about the park in general if anybody knows answer. Why was it renamed the San Diego Safari Park? It was the San Diego Wild Animal Park when I visited in 2009. Does anybody know why or when it was renamed?
It was shortly after you visited that it got renamed. It was a marketing decision to rename it because apparently they felt that "Wild Animal Park" didn't convey the sense of adventure that the WAP had that distinguished it from the zoo. They're trying to build a separate "brand" for this park I think in order to increase attendance. They seem to have forgotten that part of the problem is that they functionally closed half the park to most of their visitors when they closed the monorail and shut off public access to their Asia field enclosures, bonobos, etc.
I now too think that the park was renamed to Safari Park to increase visitor attendance. Their website is all safari and African-themed and does a wonderful job of advertising it as a safari and not just some big zoo with a few drive-through enclosures.
Advertising, yes. Actually, no. The idea of going on a Safari sounds great, but they still can't help the fact that it is a zoo. All their additional "Safaris" aren't really part of the normal guest experience, and cost way too much. I would imagine what they're going for is that you walk into the zoo and get to do all these exciting experiences, climbing through trees, riding segways, riding a long zip-line, etc., that is different from any other zoo. Sounds like a great family experience, but they're really trying hard to combine their unique position as an open-range zoo with a marketed African version of Disneyland, or some kind of camping adventure, which I think confuses a lot of people. Maybe soon they'll have virtual javelin throwing so you can pretend to hunt like the Maasai people? Anyway, the price they have for these "Safaris" are like if Disneyland charged you 50 bucks for every ride.
