Dallas or Fort Worth?

TinoPup

TinoPup

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
I'm suddenly going to the dfw area next month. The primary purpose of the trip is a dog show in Houston, but I'll have a day or two on each side of the weekend to hopefully explore. I'll definitely be going to the dallas world aquarium, but I'll likely only have time for one zoo. Which one should I go to?!
Priorities:
-cheetahs
-photo opportunities with a 35mm lens
-spots to cool down at (indoor eating areas with AC, animal environments that are kept cold... I'd much prefer to be going way north!)
-unique species, especially mammals
 
You can't go wrong with either zoo (and please tell me you're going to Houston as well).

For indoor areas, neither zoo will be your friend. Fort Worths MOLA and part of their penguin enclosure are both indoors and air conditioned, and some parts of the Texas Wilds are also indoors, and of course some visitor shops are indoors and AC as well. Their primate exhibit does have a large indoor area, but I wouldn't say its terribly cool inside. Dallas's reptile building is sizable and air conditioned, and they have a building by their elephants that is cooled as well if I recall correctly, however other than that virtually everything else is outdoors. They might have an indoor eating area, but I really didn't bother looking for one.

In terms of photography, honestly you're going to have a bad time at either facility using only a 35mm lens. However Fort Worth will work out better for that, the majority of their exhibits are smaller. (even then, when I visited the majority of my photos were shot at a zoom between 150 and 250mm)

As for Cheetahs, only Dallas has them.

For unique species (especially mammals), Dallas probably slightly edges out ft worth. The only super unique mammals at FW would probably be their Striped Hyenas, Bonobos and a white tiger. Dallas has Spectacled Langur, Grey Titi, a large herd of African Elephants, Gerenuk and Giant Anteater. Both have good bird and reptile collections (although I would give the edge to Dallas for reptiles).
 
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Dallas. Giants of Savannah is worth it, easily.

Fort Worth if you 1) Have a time machine to go back to 1998 when they were going gangbusters with updates 2) Have a time machine to go forward to 2030 when the Master plan is complete.
 
Ditto for insisting you visit Houston Zoo. I assume you looked into it and you realize Dallas is at least a three and a half hour drive from Houston? If you are driving that far I would think you would spend the night and see both. Waco (about halfway) has a surprisingly good small zoo. However if you absolutely must choose between Fort Worth Zoo and Dallas Zoo, then Dallas is the clear winner. For my book Zoos of the Southwest I made several trips to Texas and IMO Dallas Zoo is the best zoo in the southwest.
 
I'll always vote for dallas due to giants of the savannah, the lemur exhibit, and their monkey collection.

However, Fort Worth does have MOLA (which is nice on a hot day), a better bird of prey collection, and their new Africa savannah exhibit is very well done.
 
Thanks for all of the great replies, everyone! Thanks especially to @Hyak_II for that detailed write-up on the cooler areas, that's important to me.

White tigers don't interest me at all, I'd rather they weren't in zoos period, but striped hyena has my attention!! That one isn't on their website, either (I did just find it on their map). Hyenas are some of my favorite animals and none of the zoos within a few hours of me have them.

No go for Houston Zoo :( We are driving from the DFW area to Houston on friday, doing the dog show saturday and sunday, and then driving back sunday evening. The only chance for me to go would be if we left early on friday and I had my friend drop me off there for a few hours, because we'll have a puppy with us. I'm going to suggest it, but I think the chance of that happening is less than 1%. Of course the day they're open late is the night before.

Based on these replies, it looks like Dallas wins out, but I'm going to try and do both so that I can see the hyena :) With my luck it'll be off exhibit that day.
 
In terms of a 35mm lens don't expect to get much of anything good in terms of photos that's outside of either zoo's reptile houses. Fort Worth obviously has a better reptile house, but both have stellar collections and plenty of opportunity for photography (Iv'e spent hours at a time in both reptile houses for pictures of the collection). Fort Worth's MOLA is also better for photography though due to the fact they use real plants in the enclosures and they use some kind of light which brings out contrast.

As far as birds go Fort Worth has a very overlooked but fantastic waterfowl collection, with species such as smew, eurasian wigeon, tufted duck, falcated teal, white headed duck, and Indian spot billed duck (those are just a few examples). Dallas itself has an impressive waterfowl collection but not to the extent of Fort Worth. Both zoos have great raptor collections as mentioned, both with Harpy eagles, palm nut vultures, and white backed vultures. Fort Worth also African crested eagles and Swainson's hawk, while Dallas having more vultures such as lappet faced, hooded, and ruppel's.

Giants of the Savannah at Dallas is spectacular, but Fort Worth has it's own new Savannah which is not quite as good but very nice. Fort Worth's new hippo exhibit, I might add, is much better than that of Dallas.

If you haven't already you may want to flip through both zoo galleries to see what species they have you might want to see.

Also @Hyak_II don't forget about Fort Worth's red wolves, swift foxes, pallid bats, lesser long nosed bats, and kangaroo rats, I'd say those are pretty unique too, especially since you can't find some of them (such as the bats) in a zoo anywhere else in the world. :)
 
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d1am0ndback said:
Also @Hyak_II don't forget about Fort Worth's red wolves, swift foxes, pallid bats, lesser long nosed bats, and kangaroo rats, I'd say those are pretty unique too, especially since you can't find some of them (such as the bats) in a zoo anywhere else in the world. :)
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The bats personally make me less interested; I was attacked by one years ago and while I've gotten my outright phobia down to just a major fear, I'm not at the point yet where I can view a zoo exhibit. I can get near it, and hear them for a bit, but that's it. The kangaroo rats and foxes are a plus, though! Thanks for your input.

I'm hopefully, fingers crossed, going to be able to go to Houston Zoo :) We're heading down there early on Friday to get set up at the dog show, familiarize ourselves with the area, etc before the weekend. The zoo is open until 830pm on fridays so I should be able to get dropped off at the zoo or take an uber while my friend does stuff with the puppy.
 
Adding Downtown Aquarium in Denver now, too. My flight tonight got cancelled and the only way to get to Texas in time for the weekend is to leave from a different airport and do a 5 hour layover in Denver. I wish I could make it to the zoo but I get in at 330 and gates close at 4 :(
 
TinoPup said:
Adding Downtown Aquarium in Denver now, too. My flight tonight got cancelled and the only way to get to Texas in time for the weekend is to leave from a different airport and do a 5 hour layover in Denver. I wish I could make it to the zoo but I get in at 330 and gates close at 4 :(
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The aquarium is nice and you'll get through it in less than 2 hours or so. It is a one way loop through all the exhibits so you'll have no trouble seeing just about everything. It has a decent albeit all indoors exhibit for Sumatran tigers which makes it unique and a favorite among many is the flash flood exhibit.
 
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