Kansas City Zoo can be considered two zoos in one. The first part is a below average unexciting and haphazard older section which is being slowly updated. The second section is an excellent and very extensive immersive exhibit complex that mostly lies across a small river valley from the first section. The zoo is located 7 miles from downtown within a park.
The first weaker section starts with a nice new entry area consisting of two main buildings which surround the turnstiles, and two adjacent animal exhibits. Both buildings are modern and feature curving metal rooflines that shelter large curving wood beams inside. One building is the Zoo Learning Center, fronted by an attractive play plaza with climbable sculptures, and also has the rental facility on the backside. The other building includes ticketing, Beastro Cafe, Deja Zoo Gift Shop, and restrooms. It is also the building that houses the zoo's administration offices. Just inside the entrance is an attractive curved pond and landscape housing trumpeter swans, and an adjacent great rocky exhibit for river otters featuring windows for seperate underwater and land viewing areas. A new polar bear exhibit is being constructed adjacent to the entry, and will greatly enhance the initial experience. Two other newer exhibit buildings are located in this section. One is the newly renovated Tropics building, which occupies an older plain midcentury era edifice. This is hardly an indoor rainforest, it is more of an exhibit house that features some tropical animals in small enclosures with some live plants to accent the exhibits. It has four main exhibits, including an aracari aviary, a cramped gibbon and asian otter enclosure, a saki and capybara and crested screamer glazed exhibit, and another for blue monkeys. It is pleasant but forgettable. The other newer exhibit building is Discovery Barn, a two story building geared toward kids with play structures next to small glassed exhibits for several primates and meerkats and macaws. It is next to a large climbable outdoor Peekaboo Tree. This is also a pleasant but forgettable facility. It is located in Kidzone, which is essentially the central part of the first section and contains various small buildings for a café, carousel, snack stand, small outdoor show theater, and domestic animal barns. There are several yards for goats and deer and llamas, far too many domestic animals for my taste and especially in such a prominent location. A playground and koi pond are included too, but the sloppy layout and unimaginative presentation and detailing of this area make Kidzone another mediocre experience. Nearby, several poor older exhibit facilities are still on the grounds, including a small row of cages for toucans and tamarins, a round sea lion pool with a very small amphitheater seating area for demonstrations, and a round and highly architectural Great Ape House which is thankfully empty. This last facility has soaring fins that divide the dismal former exhibits and all rise to a central tall glass cylinder atrium; it is a great midcentury timepiece and should be preserved, but definitely should never showcase large animals again! Another poor complex is Tiger Trail, featuring a small collection of Asian animals. It was built in 1972 as Great Cat Walk for felines, but the only ones now are Sumatran tigers, while the other exhibits are for red pandas, francois langurs, binturongs, and tufted deer. All are housed in nearly identical low small plain masonry and steel cages which are separate from each other. The tiger exhibit is especially inferior, and the red panda exhibit has been ‘themed’ with chintzy lanterns and statuary around its viewing area. Nearby is an exhibit for orangutans that has an awful small geodesic-like cage structure with thick supports and wire that make it a poor experience for apes and visitors alike. The final complex of this first section of the zoo is a better one, Australia. It is a lightly and rustically themed immersive area which is the little distant cousin of the far superior second section of the zoo yet to be described. It is a loop trail that begins with a themed small building with a café and classroom, decorated with an Aboriginal wall mural and overlooking a wonderfully large central clearing in the forest that is the red kangaroo exhibit. This exhibit is the best kangaroo exhibit I have seen; it is not only large, but features a massive mob of about 40 and much of it is open to the trail which circles it with no barriers between visitors and ‘roos. A few other less successful exhibits include a walkthrough aviary, walkthrough tree kangaroo exhibit in an aviary-like structure, and small New Guinea Singing Dog yard. Another themed building area is the Sheep Station, with a recreated Outback ranch house, barn, and small museum building with displays on Aussie animals and a few small indoor kookaburra and snake exhibits, plus more domestic animals in the form of several sheep for feeding and several dromedary camels in a nearby yard for riding. Too much of this limited exhibit is devoted to domestic animals, and in combination with the Kidzone yards, the first section of the zoo feels more like a glorified farm.
If a visitor left the zoo at this point, he or she would feel ripped off. Happily, the second section of the zoo is worlds away from the first in quality and atmosphere, and is devoted to one geographic area: Africa. It is a large loop trail circling a waterway with numerous clusters of exhibits that are geographically arranged in five national areas that represent the central to southern parts of the continent. The area is reached from the first section of the zoo by either foot or a multiple car tram, both of which cross a long bridge. Happily, the tram does not circle the exhibit path and ruin the atmosphere, instead it drops passengers at an entry plaza. However, the size of this one complex is larger than many zoos and it wouldn’t have surprised me if the tram had been planned to circle the exhibit path. A small boat ride does connect two landings on the central waterways shore, but only connects about a quarter of the length of the path. The complex is set in a wooded area with central clearings and vistas of further hilly woods, and creates an atmosphere of seclusion. Many exhibits are large, yet widely spaced to enhance the wild nature of the experience. Some are open fenced yards, others are walled with minimal simulated rock or riverbank, some are contained within timber and netted enclosures, while several are set in a nicely detailed rocky kopje complex. Architectural features scattered along the path include entry signs, woodsy viewing shelters, boardwalks, bomas, and several visitor services buildings in the entry plaza that are lightly and rustically themed; very little of it is showy or matched or slick or too cliché, which contributes to the feeling of authenticity. Individual exhibits range from great to average. The collection is fairly exhaustive, although I would have enjoyed several more antelope and gazelle species represented. Some standout quality exhibits include African elephants, chimpanzees, African lions, gorillas, cheetahs, and several mixed species large yards for giraffes, zebras, ostrich, lesser kudu, scimitar-horned oryx, and eland. I include the minimally detailed African elephant exhibit in this category because it is about a quarter mile long! Above average exhibits include Guinea baboons, black rhinos, monitor lizards, hyrax, meerkats, red flanked duikers, and warthogs. Average exhibits include African wild dogs, crocodiles, kori bustards, secretary birds, hippos, finches, bat-eared foxes, servals, black-footed cats, an African aviary, tortoises, lemurs, vultures, leopards, mangabeys, red river hogs, and a mixed one for bongos and yellow-backed duikers.
Being such an uneven zoo, I rank it in the middle of the 45 zoos I have visited at number 23, just behind Indianapolis Zoo and just above Fort Worth Zoo. Its ranking hinges entirely on the Africa complex, without it this facility would be in my bottom 5. At $10.50 adult general admission, it is priced right. Africa is worth 10 bucks, and the rest is worth 1. The new River Otter Exhibit makes my top 25 small mammal exhibits at number 8. I have posted pictures in the gallery.
The first weaker section starts with a nice new entry area consisting of two main buildings which surround the turnstiles, and two adjacent animal exhibits. Both buildings are modern and feature curving metal rooflines that shelter large curving wood beams inside. One building is the Zoo Learning Center, fronted by an attractive play plaza with climbable sculptures, and also has the rental facility on the backside. The other building includes ticketing, Beastro Cafe, Deja Zoo Gift Shop, and restrooms. It is also the building that houses the zoo's administration offices. Just inside the entrance is an attractive curved pond and landscape housing trumpeter swans, and an adjacent great rocky exhibit for river otters featuring windows for seperate underwater and land viewing areas. A new polar bear exhibit is being constructed adjacent to the entry, and will greatly enhance the initial experience. Two other newer exhibit buildings are located in this section. One is the newly renovated Tropics building, which occupies an older plain midcentury era edifice. This is hardly an indoor rainforest, it is more of an exhibit house that features some tropical animals in small enclosures with some live plants to accent the exhibits. It has four main exhibits, including an aracari aviary, a cramped gibbon and asian otter enclosure, a saki and capybara and crested screamer glazed exhibit, and another for blue monkeys. It is pleasant but forgettable. The other newer exhibit building is Discovery Barn, a two story building geared toward kids with play structures next to small glassed exhibits for several primates and meerkats and macaws. It is next to a large climbable outdoor Peekaboo Tree. This is also a pleasant but forgettable facility. It is located in Kidzone, which is essentially the central part of the first section and contains various small buildings for a café, carousel, snack stand, small outdoor show theater, and domestic animal barns. There are several yards for goats and deer and llamas, far too many domestic animals for my taste and especially in such a prominent location. A playground and koi pond are included too, but the sloppy layout and unimaginative presentation and detailing of this area make Kidzone another mediocre experience. Nearby, several poor older exhibit facilities are still on the grounds, including a small row of cages for toucans and tamarins, a round sea lion pool with a very small amphitheater seating area for demonstrations, and a round and highly architectural Great Ape House which is thankfully empty. This last facility has soaring fins that divide the dismal former exhibits and all rise to a central tall glass cylinder atrium; it is a great midcentury timepiece and should be preserved, but definitely should never showcase large animals again! Another poor complex is Tiger Trail, featuring a small collection of Asian animals. It was built in 1972 as Great Cat Walk for felines, but the only ones now are Sumatran tigers, while the other exhibits are for red pandas, francois langurs, binturongs, and tufted deer. All are housed in nearly identical low small plain masonry and steel cages which are separate from each other. The tiger exhibit is especially inferior, and the red panda exhibit has been ‘themed’ with chintzy lanterns and statuary around its viewing area. Nearby is an exhibit for orangutans that has an awful small geodesic-like cage structure with thick supports and wire that make it a poor experience for apes and visitors alike. The final complex of this first section of the zoo is a better one, Australia. It is a lightly and rustically themed immersive area which is the little distant cousin of the far superior second section of the zoo yet to be described. It is a loop trail that begins with a themed small building with a café and classroom, decorated with an Aboriginal wall mural and overlooking a wonderfully large central clearing in the forest that is the red kangaroo exhibit. This exhibit is the best kangaroo exhibit I have seen; it is not only large, but features a massive mob of about 40 and much of it is open to the trail which circles it with no barriers between visitors and ‘roos. A few other less successful exhibits include a walkthrough aviary, walkthrough tree kangaroo exhibit in an aviary-like structure, and small New Guinea Singing Dog yard. Another themed building area is the Sheep Station, with a recreated Outback ranch house, barn, and small museum building with displays on Aussie animals and a few small indoor kookaburra and snake exhibits, plus more domestic animals in the form of several sheep for feeding and several dromedary camels in a nearby yard for riding. Too much of this limited exhibit is devoted to domestic animals, and in combination with the Kidzone yards, the first section of the zoo feels more like a glorified farm.
If a visitor left the zoo at this point, he or she would feel ripped off. Happily, the second section of the zoo is worlds away from the first in quality and atmosphere, and is devoted to one geographic area: Africa. It is a large loop trail circling a waterway with numerous clusters of exhibits that are geographically arranged in five national areas that represent the central to southern parts of the continent. The area is reached from the first section of the zoo by either foot or a multiple car tram, both of which cross a long bridge. Happily, the tram does not circle the exhibit path and ruin the atmosphere, instead it drops passengers at an entry plaza. However, the size of this one complex is larger than many zoos and it wouldn’t have surprised me if the tram had been planned to circle the exhibit path. A small boat ride does connect two landings on the central waterways shore, but only connects about a quarter of the length of the path. The complex is set in a wooded area with central clearings and vistas of further hilly woods, and creates an atmosphere of seclusion. Many exhibits are large, yet widely spaced to enhance the wild nature of the experience. Some are open fenced yards, others are walled with minimal simulated rock or riverbank, some are contained within timber and netted enclosures, while several are set in a nicely detailed rocky kopje complex. Architectural features scattered along the path include entry signs, woodsy viewing shelters, boardwalks, bomas, and several visitor services buildings in the entry plaza that are lightly and rustically themed; very little of it is showy or matched or slick or too cliché, which contributes to the feeling of authenticity. Individual exhibits range from great to average. The collection is fairly exhaustive, although I would have enjoyed several more antelope and gazelle species represented. Some standout quality exhibits include African elephants, chimpanzees, African lions, gorillas, cheetahs, and several mixed species large yards for giraffes, zebras, ostrich, lesser kudu, scimitar-horned oryx, and eland. I include the minimally detailed African elephant exhibit in this category because it is about a quarter mile long! Above average exhibits include Guinea baboons, black rhinos, monitor lizards, hyrax, meerkats, red flanked duikers, and warthogs. Average exhibits include African wild dogs, crocodiles, kori bustards, secretary birds, hippos, finches, bat-eared foxes, servals, black-footed cats, an African aviary, tortoises, lemurs, vultures, leopards, mangabeys, red river hogs, and a mixed one for bongos and yellow-backed duikers.
Being such an uneven zoo, I rank it in the middle of the 45 zoos I have visited at number 23, just behind Indianapolis Zoo and just above Fort Worth Zoo. Its ranking hinges entirely on the Africa complex, without it this facility would be in my bottom 5. At $10.50 adult general admission, it is priced right. Africa is worth 10 bucks, and the rest is worth 1. The new River Otter Exhibit makes my top 25 small mammal exhibits at number 8. I have posted pictures in the gallery.
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) they are going to be warm weather penguins, the exhibit has also been pushed back until 2013.