Auckland Zoo Best way to proceed

OrangePerson

OrangePerson

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
I'm from the UK & hoping to visit Auckland Zoo next week, I guess it will be really busy. Does anyone have any advice on where to go first before it gets really crowded/anything not to miss please.

I am particularly intertested in primates but like to see as much as possible.
 
If you would like to see the big cats in action ie. not sleeping then it would be a good idea to go see these (tigers, lions, cheetahs) either early in the morning just after the zoo opens or later when the zoo is about to close. The Tiger cubs in particular come out in the afternoon and have a play and usually get fed and the Cheetahs are always up and about early in the morning when they get fed (i think).

The same goes for the rainforest (siamang gibbons, spider monkeys, golden lion tamarins, bonnet macaques etc) as it gets very very busy during the middle of that day and it becomes very hard to get close enough to see anything unless you are very tall, especially with the tamarins.

Most of the zoo gets very busy at midday which is to be expected so if you were to go to the zoo at opening (9.30am) and check out the cats and the most popular enclosures (burma the elephant, rainforest, hippo river etc) as early as possible and save the smaller, less popular, more hidden enclosures (doris the alligator, reptiles, birds) for later when there are more people in the zoo it should work.

Also check out the list of encounters and get to the ones you are relly interested as early as you can especially if it is a popular encounter (though most encounters are popular, some more than others) such as the elephant, lion and Tiger encounters. Some encounters have only small spaces for people to fit in to (such as the tiger, lemur and in particular the native fauna encounter) so you would benefit from arriving at these even earlier (1/2 hour before maybe)

If you have never fed a giraffe before then the Giraffe encounter is something not to miss, its a cool experience.

At the moment Auckland Zoo has a very cute little baby boy Hamdrayas Baboon that if you catch on the right day, and time of day is a real little character and fun to watch playing around.

If you go to the zoo on a tuesday then make sure you go to the NZCCM
vet team encounter; it gives visitors a unique opportunity to watch the zoos vet team in action.

The zoo is rather proud of their breeding family of Orangutans and 4 year old Madju is a real cutey so have a look at them too.

Oh and make sure you have a look at our NZ sealions, Fur seals and Californian Sealions for the underwater viewing window, its pretty cool.

Well thats all I can really think of at the moment.

Hope it helps

JTC
 
I think I'll recomened this zoo to my aunt and uncle and 2 cousins.:) Thanks to you I can tell them what to see.;)
 
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Thank you for the information. Unfortunately I'd already left for NZ by then but we went to Auckland Zoo and had a good day. Bearing in mind it was 28th December it wasn't as crazy as I'd feared. There were a lot of people with very small children & the tiger enrichment talk was very busy but other than that it didn't seem particularly crowded.

The tigers were all out and they are beautiful and look really happy and chilled out. I got some great pics of them all.

I loved the spider monkeys who seemed a really interesting and active group. Iwani & his new mate seemed to be getting on well & were singing together.

We got a bit of a shock when we turned to dash over for the elephant talk to discover Burma walking along behind us (followed by human pooper-scooper). We followed him & saw him have a dip in the pool followed by a coat of mud topped off with a layer of dust.

The non-breeding orangs were out and the male was using a sack hooked over something to pull himself up to look in through a window. They went in and the breeding group came (charging) out for treats. Charlie stole young Madju's cheesy pine cone.

We saw the kiwis - a lady said she'd been a number of times and never spotted them (we were lucky to go on to see a wild one later in our trip!)

We made a special trip over to see Janie (is that right) the chimp in her exotic home, she was helping herself to greenery growing outside.

I was surprised to see such a lot of lions, two males had a small altercation but nothing serious. We saw the cheetahs and the serval, the serval seemed to be going round & round in a big circle.

Well I'm sure we saw lots of other things aswell but it's a few weeks ago. Anyway we had an enjoyable day. I'd like to go again but doubt I'll make it that far!
 
Burma is a female and they have 2:3 lions. (2 unrelated males that were handreared together in South Africa, a mother and daughter and unrelated female)
 
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