Summer Road Trip

Lincoln Park Zoo:

The Best:

- Regenstein Center for African Apes: This complex features three relatively spacious outdoor exhibits that have lots of encrichment features and offer very good viewing opportunities. The apes also have the option to hang out in their adjoining indoor exhibits, which are good as far as indoor exhibits go.

- Black bear and wolf exhibits in the Children's Zoo: These are both rather spacious exhibits that provide a lot of foliage and enrichment for the animals.

The Worst:

- Like many zoos that rely so heavily on buidlings, there were some exhibts that are too small and keep animals from ever seeing the sun, but overall the indoor enclosures were respectable.

Overall: This is a small zoo, but has a good collection for its size and on average has better exhibit quality compared to the nearby Brookfield Zoo. Most of the exhibits are at least roughly average and there are some strong highs that I already mentioned plus very good exibits for macaques, polar bears, and some of its smaller animals.
 
Shedd Aquarium:

The Best:

- Wild Reef: This exhibit has a lot to like, but the highlight is a fantastic tank with floor to ceiling curved glass that features a great collection of sharks, rays, and fish.

The Worst: Not much is truly bad here, but I gotta say that much of the main floor is mediocre imo. I'm talking about the u-shaped hallways that feature rows of a lot of small to average sized tanks and one nice longer tank at the bottom of the u.

The Conflicted: I'm not sure if we should be keeping dolphins and especially belugas in captivity at all, but while we do, I think the tanks need to be huge. The ones in Chicago are pretty big for an aquarium and the marine mammals are certainly entertaining to watch, but again, I'm conflicted here. The sea lion exhibit though is truly bad unless I'm missing something. Very small just like the one aquarium in Atlanta.

Overall: The Wild Reef exhibit is excellent, Amazon Rising is strong led by my favorite anaconda exhibit, the special exhibit was good, they have some cool and rare species, and of course some superstar animals such as belugas, dolphins, sea otters, sea lions, and penguins. However, I'm not as high on some of those star animals being held as many others, and while the exhibitry reaches very high levels, a relatively high amount of enclosures are standard at best imo. This is a great aquarium, but I don't think I'm quite as high on it as some others on here.
 
Indianapolis Zoo:

The Best:

- Being able to see walruses is a real treat and having dolphins swim above and around visitors is very cool despite my conflicting thoughts on holding them in captivity.

The Worst:

- Nothing stands out as being awful from my recollection, but it is a zoo that can be seen in under 3 hours so that limits its potential ranking.

The Noteworthy:

- The Orangutan Center: Some people probably think this is great while others likely think it's awful (I'm guessing some on here think the latter). I won't go to either extreme as this weird exhibit doesn't try to ne naturalistic whatsoever, which is unfortunate, but it does allow for and perhaps even stimulate a fair amount of activity from the apes. It also offers the visitors some good and varying viewing opportunities. The outside portion of the exhibit is reminiscent of the O-Line in DC as the Orangutans have the option of traveling between high above platforms, which is good for them and a great sight for visits to behold. I think the skyline ride that goes around the platforms is superfluous, but I'm sure some enjoy it. Overall, this exhibit seems to work for the great apes and most visitors likely enjoy it. I'm probably biased though because the orangutans were tremendously entertaining during my visit.

Overall: This mid sized zoo has a lot to like and not much to dislike unless you look at the orangutan complex with horror. They do pretty well with star species, especially considering they have dolphins and walruses, which are both uncommon in zoos. The African Plains section is mostly delightful although the elephants and baboons could use bigger exhibits (how large is the elephant exhibit? It didn't seem that small, but probably on the small side for elephants?). The tigers had a pretty good exhibit and most other exhibits were at least average in quality including the new macaque exhibit, which featured a very entertaining troop. The Oceans complex, which the macaques are a part of certainly makes this zoo stand out from most American zoos that lack aquariums, walruses, and dolphins. So while this zoo is not very large and is certainly lacking in some categories of their collection, it has a fair amount of star species and is of pretty good quality.
 
Cincinnati Zoo:

The Best:

- The collection: This zoo both excels in star species and depth, at least with mammals.

- Africa: This area features good to very good exhibits (the wild dog exhibit stands out) for its inhabitants including celebrity hippo Fiona. There's also a running yard for cheetahs.

The Worst:

- Bear exhibits: These are old school small grottoes with a bunch of rock work.

- Herps: While the zoo has a fantastic collection of mammals, it falters in this category and also fails in exhibitry with a small and poorly done reptile house.

Overall: The Cincinnati Zoo required more time to visit than all but the zoos in Omaha and Saint Louis during this trip due to the plethora of mammals, which in my opinion is the where a zoo should most want to shine in. They have a really nice African section, a wolf exhibit that is a standout, good ape exhibits, a cool nocturnal building with Night Hunters, a nice insect house, and manatees, which are a great zoo rarity to exhibit. They do lack in their herp collection and even their bird collection leaves a lot to be desired, but the rest of the collection more than makes up for that imo. This isn't a zoo that is going to blow zoo nerds away with its exhibitry, but most of the exhibits are average to very good, with the bears being the most urgent outlier in that regard. Overall, this would be a zoo I'd be happy to call my home zoo largely because of the collection of mammals, but also because the exhibitry as a whole is pretty good.
 
Nashville Zoo:

The Best:

- Andean Bear exhibit: This new exhibit is top notch. It is very spacious, has a nice mock rock backing (with trees further in the background) with a waterfall coming down and creating a stream that winds through more mock rock down to a pool in front of a very large viewing window. Just before the pool is a fallen, but propped up tree placed in the exhibit to allow the bears to climb it. There is also plenty of grass along with some trees to the sides of the rock. There is open viewing too.

- Gibbon Islands: The gibbons and siamangs have large islands which are rich in foliage including some very tall trees that the apes can climb on. We witnessed some tremendous behavior from both species as they climbed the trees and swung from branch to branch.

- Rhino exhibit: This is huge.

The Worst: The size and collection of this zoo are pretty small.

The noteworthy: I bought a behind the scenes tour for my wife and I since okapis are her favorite animal and giraffes rank up there, and this tour featured both species. It was well worth the $40 each as we got to feed a giraffe from ground level instead of the typical elevated position and we got to feed and pet the okapi!

Overall: This young zoo is a great small to mid- sized zoo. All of the exhibits besides some tropical herp tanks are at least above average with some being close to, if not elite. For how limited they are in species, they have a good mixture of mostly appealing and/or characteristic species. On the down side, the collection is not strong as I mentioned, but it's also kind of a hodgepodge setup as it's not particularly organized by region or taxonomy. The tour guide we had spoke of a lot of future development that they are planning, which sounded promising. First up is the tiger exhibit, which is under construction and will be one of the best exhibits anywhere according to the guide. This zoo is very enjoyable due to strong exhibitry of the limited, but appealing collection. It also has some cool experiences including the tours you pay additionally for, but additionally the kangaroo walk through exhibit where we got to pet one of the animals and a tortoise exhibit where guests could hang out in the exhibit, touch their shells, and feed them for a fee.
 
mweb08 said:
The tour guide we had spoke of a lot of future development that they are planning, which sounded promising.
Click to expand...

Did the guide say if they still have plans to bring elephants back to the zoo, or have they permanently ended their elephant program?
 
DavidBrown said:
Did the guide say if they still have plans to bring elephants back to the zoo, or have they permanently ended their elephant program?
Click to expand...

She did mention that they still want to bring back elephants, but it didn't sound like a sure thing.
 
Birmingham Zoo:

The Best:

- Elephant exhibit: This is one of the top elephant exhibits in the country due to its great size and nicely designed exhibit that provides the pachyderms nice, varied terrain with a couple of pools. There are also several great places to view the elephants in their naturalistic enclosure featuring mud banks on the perimeter.

The Worst:

- The rhinos and hippos have very basic, smaller enclosures that are off to the side of the elephant exhibit.

- The indoor orangutan exhibit would be fine if they had a better outdoor enclosure, but that's not the case.

Overall: Other than the elephant exhibit and some bigger than usual reptile tanks, this zoo is mostly mediocre and sometimes worse although they have a respectable collection for a zoo if its size.

Well that was the final zoo of my trip. Next up: zoo rankings.
 
Zoo rankings:

Henry Doorly

Saint Louis

Memphis
Cincinnati
Kansas City
Minnesota
Nashville
Lincoln Park
Brookfield
Indianapolis
Montgomery
Chattanooga
Birmingham

I reserve the right to change this.

Also note that a lot of these zoos are pretty close in my view.
 
Thanks for this thread, it was a good read. :) I think you forgot to list Atlanta in your rankings, though.

I wanted to comment on Birmingham as although I haven't been in nearly 20 years by now, it was my childhood zoo and I visited enough to remember most of it quite well. I'm proud of it for bringing out such a standout elephant exhibit as I remember it being pretty stock standard in the 90s. I could never forget that dark, dismal orangutan exhibit, though, and I'm extremely disappointed they haven't addressed that yet.

Is that Predators building still around, and has it been improved at all? I remember it being pretty bad - except for outdoor viewing of lions, tigers and beavers (still confused by that last one), all the carnivores including some as large as snow leopards and pumas were stuck in fairly cramped, glum indoor exhibits with little to no outdoor access as far as I could tell. (I'm also curious about the fate of that shoddy fake cheetah diorama they had in there :p)

I pretty much agree with all your thoughts on GA Aquarium and Zoo Atlanta, btw.
 
Ah, yes, I did forget Atlanta!

I think I would place it between Kansas City and Atlanta.

Yes, the Predators building is still there and it holds smaller predators now, so while still not good imo, it seems to have improved from when you used to go.
 
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