Queens Zoo review:
I visited this zoo on August 13th, and it was my first ever trip to the facility. What really surprised me was how small it was, easily seen in an hour although that includes just a few minutes in the farmyard zone. The amenities are bare bones, as there is a single set of restrooms about halfway through the zoo, along with a tiny cafe that serves pre-made sandwiches and a small gift shop. A food truck was the sole offering for lunch and drinks were in a cooler on the ground that a family would take to the beach. For an AZA-accredited, Wildlife Conservation Society establishment, I was a little taken aback.
The good news is that the zoo is of a high standard, with only around 15 exhibits but there is a clear theme of focusing on animals from North and South America. I liked how the outer walking loop was wide and paved, but the short pathways to each enclosure consisted of woodchip paths. My wife and I went in the ornate entrance gates and headed right, past Andean Bears, a delightful aviary for Thick-billed Parrots and Burrowing Owls, Chacoan Peccaries and Southern Pudu, before making it to the approximate halfway point where one can sip a soda and look out at American Bison and California Sea Lions.
Up next are exhibits for species such as Coyote, Elk, Great Horned Owl, Cougar, Canada Lynx, Bald Eagle and American Alligator, plus a waterfowl pond. That's the entire zoo, except for the impressive 1964 Aviary with a winding path that goes up and then down in a one-way fashion. I was happy to see the zoo full of visitors on a smoking hot afternoon, including a couple of summer camp groups, but it is very tiny indeed.
Afterwards, we walked through Queens Park and past the New York Hall of Science and we spent an hour inside Queens Museum, which has a lot of information about the 1964 World's Fair and an absolutely staggering achievement in the shape of a vast panorama model of New York City. It's a massive room and an incredible creation that's well worth seeing and it was built in the 1960s but updated with 60,000 additions to the year 1992. It must be one of the largest scale models on the planet. We then wandered over to the million-pound, gigantic steel 'Unisphere' sculpture and later on that night we went to our first ever Major League Baseball game (Mets vs Braves). From strolling through the neighborhood from the subway station to Queens Park, it's what I'd call a rough-looking area, but between the zoo, the hall of science, the museum and baseball stadium it's well worth visiting the borough of Queens.
I visited this zoo on August 13th, and it was my first ever trip to the facility. What really surprised me was how small it was, easily seen in an hour although that includes just a few minutes in the farmyard zone. The amenities are bare bones, as there is a single set of restrooms about halfway through the zoo, along with a tiny cafe that serves pre-made sandwiches and a small gift shop. A food truck was the sole offering for lunch and drinks were in a cooler on the ground that a family would take to the beach. For an AZA-accredited, Wildlife Conservation Society establishment, I was a little taken aback.
The good news is that the zoo is of a high standard, with only around 15 exhibits but there is a clear theme of focusing on animals from North and South America. I liked how the outer walking loop was wide and paved, but the short pathways to each enclosure consisted of woodchip paths. My wife and I went in the ornate entrance gates and headed right, past Andean Bears, a delightful aviary for Thick-billed Parrots and Burrowing Owls, Chacoan Peccaries and Southern Pudu, before making it to the approximate halfway point where one can sip a soda and look out at American Bison and California Sea Lions.
Up next are exhibits for species such as Coyote, Elk, Great Horned Owl, Cougar, Canada Lynx, Bald Eagle and American Alligator, plus a waterfowl pond. That's the entire zoo, except for the impressive 1964 Aviary with a winding path that goes up and then down in a one-way fashion. I was happy to see the zoo full of visitors on a smoking hot afternoon, including a couple of summer camp groups, but it is very tiny indeed.
Afterwards, we walked through Queens Park and past the New York Hall of Science and we spent an hour inside Queens Museum, which has a lot of information about the 1964 World's Fair and an absolutely staggering achievement in the shape of a vast panorama model of New York City. It's a massive room and an incredible creation that's well worth seeing and it was built in the 1960s but updated with 60,000 additions to the year 1992. It must be one of the largest scale models on the planet. We then wandered over to the million-pound, gigantic steel 'Unisphere' sculpture and later on that night we went to our first ever Major League Baseball game (Mets vs Braves). From strolling through the neighborhood from the subway station to Queens Park, it's what I'd call a rough-looking area, but between the zoo, the hall of science, the museum and baseball stadium it's well worth visiting the borough of Queens.
