The group in front of the tank are on a 'Discovery tour'. For an extra charge, you can take a tour around the park in small groups, guided in a variety of languages. It's not very clear what you see - I think the itinerary is flexible. I think tours visit some of the main highlights and may go behind the scenes depending on what you choose.
The group in front of the tank are on a 'Discovery tour'. For an extra charge, you can take a tour around the park in small groups, guided in a variety of languages. It's not very clear what you see - I think the itinerary is flexible. I think tours visit some of the main highlights and may go behind the scenes depending on what you choose.
Actually I found that most of the rumours circulated about this place are myths. The location of the breeding area is well known, and fairly easy for members of the public to visit. I'd be happy to PM more precise details to any zoochatters with plans to visit Tenerife in the near future.
Loro Parque Fundacion's breeding centre is located in a town just outside Puerto de la Cruz. It has over 1000 aviaries for rare birds, including a small complex for Spix's macaws. If you buy membership of LPF, you are entitled to a single visit each year.
I found that further information was very hard to extract until I was actually in Loro Parque, and would have made things a lot easier had I known before. Because of the brevity of visits to the breeding centre, and clashes in my schedule, I felt it wasn't really worth paying so much just for a single visit which I didn't think I'd find enormously satisfying.
Unfortunately I have no plans for a visit to Tenerife in the near future but I do want to take the kids there when they'll appreciate it a bit more. Say the next 3-4 years, I think that they would love the killer whales a bit more than the parrots though...
What were the highlights of your trip? Did you go with the specific aim of seeing any particular species? And are the penguin and shark exhibits as good as I'm led to believe?
I think that I visited Loro Parque as a (very) small child but have no recollection of it, it sort of blurs in to memories of Marineland Mallorca which I also visited as an infant.
What were the highlights of your trip? Did you go with the specific aim of seeing any particular species? And are the penguin and shark exhibits as good as I'm led to believe?
I really liked Tenerife in general; it's very hard to choose highlights in Loro Parque - the entire place is really amazing. The exceptional quality of the entire park, and the way it manages to cater to so many interests, is exemplary. The first few parrot taxa I came across led me to think that it would probably be one of my favourite zoos by the end of the trip.
I went with the hope of seeing almost everything. Eventually I saw pretty much everything on display, but there were still a few notable misses (which I would have liked to see on the tour of the breeding centre, had it been a feasible option).
My trip to RioZoo, in Brazil, had been cut short, so I was dragged quickly past the Lear's macaws (which flew into their nest box as I approached ) and I didn't get much time to really appreciate quite a few of the parrots - so I was hoping for a strong South American presence in Loro Parque, and I wasn't let down.
I think the penguin exhibit is one of the best I've seen (probably beating Faunia and SeaWorld Orlando among others). It's a very well done complex. The shark exhibit is a bit more standard. I had quite high hopes for the aquarium, published photos look very nice, and it seemed a bit under-rated. For a zoo's aquarium, it is very decent. A nice little collection and some very nice displays. As Maguari had told me, it's definitely not something to skip.
