After close to 3 years of waiting and checking near-daily for updates, I'm excited to finally post a review, walk-through, and species list for Reptilandia Reptile Lagoon! All information is based on my visit on March 6th, 2024.
Reptilandia Reptile Lagoon is a brand new zoo located in Johnson City, Texas that keeps exclusively reptiles. The facility is set out in the beautiful Texas Hill Country, less than 5 minutes from both a nice little "downtown" area and a pretty decent Best Western. You're about an hour west of Austin, which gives you plenty of additional options to make a trip out even if you're not an uber reptile nerd. This review will be quite long, so for a TL;DR, here's what you need to know:
Reptilandia Reptile Lagoon is a brand new zoo located in Johnson City, Texas that keeps exclusively reptiles. The facility is set out in the beautiful Texas Hill Country, less than 5 minutes from both a nice little "downtown" area and a pretty decent Best Western. You're about an hour west of Austin, which gives you plenty of additional options to make a trip out even if you're not an uber reptile nerd. This review will be quite long, so for a TL;DR, here's what you need to know:
- If you are a fan of reptiles, this is THE BEST facility to visit in the United States, period.
- What is likely the largest indoor reptile enclosure in the country can be found along the back wall of the Tropical Building, replicating a Papuan swamp forest. It measures 60 feet long, 20 feet from front to back (at its widest), and 30 feet tall and is visible from two stories.
- Dozens of extremely rare species, whatever you take that to mean (endangered, rare in zoological collections, rare in herpetoculture, etc).
- Over 100 large, naturalistic, biotope-style enclosures in total, the majority of which are mixed-species and several of which are visible from two stories. Every enclosure also has as large of a water feature as possible, while still remaining appropriate for the inhabitants (i.e., desert species don't have massive waterfalls).
- If you're a serious reptile nerd, try to set aside a full weekday (10:00 AM to 5:00 PM) to really take this place in. The number of behaviors I witnessed for the first time in species I've personally worked with for over a decade was astounding.
- To be fully transparent, if you aren't a huge reptile fan, this will likely be a quick trip (an hour or two tops) - plan accordingly.
- Be sure to meet Quetzal, Ari, and/or Ryu if you get the chance! Three fantastic people
. The exhibit is teeming with activity, and I even watched one of the tortoises swim clear across the entire enclosure - not wading, full-on swimming in almost 4 feet of water. While I think the reptile choices for this exhibit are phenomenal, I have a few improvements that come to mind immediately. First would be another smaller species of lizard to fill the upper levels - Blue-Lipped Treerunners (Plica umbra) would fit perfectly. The amount of space in this exhibit would also be perfect for showcasing the jumping abilities of Smoky Jungle Frogs (Leptodactylus pentadactylus), which are all too often crammed into tiny exhibits. In the fish department, this tank would be a great contender for some of the "staple" large species, like Black Pacu (Colossoma macropomum), Redtail Catfish (Phractocephalus hemioliopterus), Tiger Shovelnose Catfish (Pseudoplatystoma tigrinum), and River Stingrays (Potamotrygon sp.). Arapaima sp. would probably get too large for this exhibit, but Silver Arowanas (Osteoglossum bicirrhosum) are another must-have, IMO.
, great job with listing this place out btw), but I want to talk a little bit about signage here while I'm at it. I should've done this in the intro, but here we are.
