August 14th, 2020. This is the land portion of the indoor area, the pool is just to the left of the photo. The outdoor exhibit is still under renovation.
This was my first time visiting the zoo so I couldn't really say what the difference is personally, but according to news articles: the indoor space was expanded, the roof was modified and the underwater viewing windows were improved so that visitors could get closer to the Hippos.
Looking on google maps, it appears this used to be an outdoor exhibit. So being enclosed, given the climate is a great idea. Also nice to see a fairly large land space.
Heres the plan from the zoos website. So the old outdoor exhibit became an indoor exhibit, and a new outdoor yard is being added. Seems like a good project.
Yeah, I was happy to see such a large land space for Hippos, something that's unfortunately quite rare. I haven't seen many indoor Hippo exhibits but this is definitely the best I've seen, I couldn't really get a good photo of the water area but it's also pretty large.
