I found LAIR to be great, the best reptile house I'd seen at the time of my first visit in 2016. While I've since seen reptile houses I like more (Fort Worth's MOLA for example) I still really like LA's. As others have said, ROTA, most of the Australia area (especially the Australia House), elephants, Francois' Langur, walk-through aviaries, apes, sea lions, goral, and several of the other hoofstock yards are quite nice. It's certainly not my favorite zoo and I look forward to the changes, but it's far from a terrible zoo IMO.
@ThylacineAlive My main problem with LAIR is its size. The exhibits are designed wonderfully but it's just too small for my liking. I dont think the entire zoo is terrible but I don't thing any of the exhibits you listed are really great but rather just average. Perhaps I've been spoiled with the San Diego Zoo but none of the exhibits really caught my eye as great except for maybe ROTA.
@The_UltimateBea But compared to San Diego, very few zoos will look in any way impressive!
Do you mean that LAIR itself is too small, or that the individual displays within it could do with more space? To my eyes, the various exhibits were of a good size. The house(s) themselves could be bigger, of course, but I cannot think of many reptile houses that are larger.
Indeed, LAIR consists of two indoor buildings and several outdoor enclosures, certainly much, much more than many of the other zoos I've been to. Certainly better than San Diego's reptile house as well
Is San Diego's giraffe enclosure really that much better than LA's, though? And if we're going to play that game, compared to Bronx, San Diego's hoofstock enclosures are mediocre at best
@ThylacineAlive San Diego has a much larger reptile collection and with the outdoor area included, the overall size of the LAIR area becomes small. I agree the exhibits themselves are great but I don't think there are enough of them. For me personally I don't think I'll ever be blown away by a reptile enclosure of any sort.
An empty pit wpuld be a better giraffe enclosure than san diego's.
@The_UltimateBea This is true but San Diego has, by far, the largest reptile exhibit (or exhibits as the area is made up of a few reptile-centric exhibits) of any zoo I've ever been to and probably one of the largest in the world so it isn't really a fair comparison. LA's is still much larger than what most zoos have.
@ThylacineAlive Great exhibit. still didn't blow me away. Maybe itsi just because ImI not that into reptiles but I can only comment on my opinions which are that LAIR is not a showstopper, even if far above average.
I personally liked LAIR better than the San Diego reptile habitats, but that is mainly due to preference of species. I enjoy lizards and turtles much more than snakes, and all San Diego has is snakes! San Diego's reptile walk is unbeatable, but LAIR's floor to ceiling windows matches it in quality IMO.
