I visited Dierenrijk yesterday for the first time in a long time. Since this isn't a very well-visited zoo for Zoochat standards, I'll note everything new I noticed:
In the "reptile realm", both the Corn snake and the Green iguanas were off-exhibit, the corn snake sign was still up and a sign in the exhibit said it was temporarily empty, but the green iguana terrarium had all signage removed.
The Grey-crowned cranes have moved from the Bird Realm aviary to the smaller wetland aviary with Cattle egrets and Eurasian spoonbills, according to a guide it's because the Flamingos weren't breeding as wel with the cranes present. I don't know whether or not it's temporary though.
The new elephant exhibit looks good. The Crab-eating macaques weren't very visible unfortunately but that's probably because it was a pretty rainy day. The rock formations feel like a great addition for them. The enclosure also feels a lot more lush, even though the trees still have a lot of growing to do.
Part of the zoo is closed due to the building of new enclosures for Red pandas and Golden takins, although you wouldn't be able to tell from the map as they didn't change the map at all. It does look like it's going to be some great new exhibits, as it's quite an impressive enclosure:
The Bactrian camels have moved to the former Scottish highland enclosure. I think it's quite a fitting enclosure, looking quite similar to the wind-swept steppes were they naturally occur.
The Alpine ibexes were off-display due to the construction going on in the exhibit right next to them. They needed to go through the Ibex enclosure to get to the top of the future Takin enclosure.
I wasn't as impressed with the new Siberian tiger enclosure as I was with the Elephant renovation. Pictures made it seem as big, or at least similarly sized to Leeuwarden's new tiger enclosure, but it's barely half the size. I think they either should've moved the Lynx exhibit and included that space into the tiger exhibit, or made it a covered aviary, and not used as big of a moat.
Next to the new tiger enclosure they also built a water playground:
The Mandarin ducks and Common shelducks are no longer held in the Bird Realm aviary, the Chiloe wigeons were still there, but weren't signed. Because bird flu season has finally passed, the aviary was open again, which I was very happy about. Unfortunately though, it seems the back route of the aviary has been blocked off permanently, which means you can't see the back of the aviary anymore. I did manage to see all bird species, luckily, but it's still a shame if you ask me.
The zoo also had a temporary event, "dino vs animal". This isn't news but I do have to vent here for a moment. I saw the same event in Overloon last year and it was almost just as awful. The ugly, soft-bodied dino statues, the ai-generated promotional posters, the incredibly outdated depictions. It was just awful. When the event was in Overloon, they even included the Indominous rex and Blue the velociraptor, from the Jurassic world franchise... Luckily those two were retired in Dierenrijk, but it still included the ugly, frilled Dilophosauruses.
What's more, there were a lot of repeat dinos. I counted four dilophosaurus statues, one of which was correct, two were the correct size but had the frill, and one was Jurassic park sized, with frill. There were also two wildly different spinosauruses, and two very strange Amargasauruses, none of them accurate...
1 sort of accurate, 2 just hot garbage:
Why is 1 neon? Why does the other have a spinosaurus sail?!
I know Amersfoort's dinosaur forest isn't all too popular in the zoo nerd world, but even with its outdated models, it's still wildly more accurate than whatever this is:
