Things people do that irritate you when you go to the zoo? #2

[TinoPup]

I was at a zoo recently and I over heard a woman say that she really like the zoo because it had plenty of toilets. The mind boggles, if that's what she looks for in a day out why didn't she just go to a motorway service station?

As someone who frequently needs to use one, it's obviously not a reason I'd go to a zoo or a make or break decision on how good one is, but it's definitely something I'd say out loud and something I would appreciate! When I went to the Bronx in early March most of the bathrooms were closed, it was awful. I completely skipped the jungle because I didn't know if those ones would be open and I couldn't risk being that far. By the time I found one that was unlocked, there was a whole pack of us walking around together, stopping and looking at the maps to find the next one to check.

 

[Hyak_II]

Ya honestly I wouldn't ever complain about nice/abundant toilets. When you gotta go, you gotta go, yo. Plus lots of zoo visitors are kids that need to piss all the time (or babies that soil their britches) so lots of washrooms helps with that too.

I feel like a good mention here are the Calgary Zoo's washrooms in their Canadian Domain under the waterfall. 15/10, hands down the best zoo toilets over, that I have personally seen.

Dishonorable mention to Seaworld San Diego's washrooms by the dolphin stadium. Very busy, the floor was all wet and sandy, and the stalls were dirty. 3.5/10.

 

[Jennings]

I was at a zoo recently and I over heard a woman say that she really like the zoo because it had plenty of toilets. The mind boggles, if that's what she looks for in a day out why didn't she just go to a motorway service station?

I've heard it said in the heritage railway sector that the key to customer satisfaction is 'Views, brew, and loos.' Give the punters something pretty to look at, a decent cup of tea at a reasonable price, and (especially for women, who have have usually been dragged there by their partners or kids anyhow) clean toilets with minimal queues, and everything else will fall into place. I'd argue that the same is true here.

 

[Jennings]

I know this thread is old, but I want to comment because I have one example that really made me actually cry... so I was at the Turtle Back Zoo a while ago, (of course I am there a lot but this scene was a while ago), and I was at the Gray Wolf Exhibit, one of my favirotes at the zoo. And this kid started banging on the glass and SCREAMING at the wolves. And I tried telling him to be quiet the wolves have sensitive hearing, BUT I WAS THE ONE GETTING YELLED AT BY HIS MOTHER. His mother goes "excuse me that's my child your talking to!" Like okay lady if you are aware that is your child then make your child be quiet for peeps sake. This is a zoo where you can't bang on the windows or scream at the animals. And so that day I left crying cause I was upset that she yelled at me but not her child who was the one causing disturbance to the animals.

Last summer I saw a kid slapping the Hell out of the Bermuda killifish tank at Chester while his mother/grandmother just stood there and let him do it; some of the rarest fish on Earth being subjected to the equivalent of an artillery barrage. Unfortunately in the current climate the only way you can prevent this sort of thing is by placing the glass out of reach of visitors, either with a physical barrier, or with recessed tanks high up as at Regent's Park, or by simply placing a layer of perspex a few inches in front of the tank. It's probably a controversial view but I can't help thinking that any zoo aquarium where this cannot be done should either be taken off show or heavily monitored and subjected to a timed ticketing system.

 

[Zia]

I was at a zoo recently and I over heard a woman say that she really like the zoo because it had plenty of toilets. The mind boggles, if that's what she looks for in a day out why didn't she just go to a motorway service station?

I don't think it is weird to comment on how good / bad the facilities are in general tbh - it is like saying there is a nice cafe or lots of benches / picnic tables etc - they are not what 'makes' a zoo but it all has an impact on how pleasant your day is going to be.

 

[Jennings]

I don't think it is weird to comment on how good / bad the facilities are in general tbh - it is like saying there is a nice cafe or lots of benches / picnic tables etc - they are not what 'makes' a zoo but it all has an impact on how pleasant your day is going to be.

Again, views, brews, and loos. As with heritage railways the people who actually run the outfit need to bear in mind that what they want and what the general public want are not necessarily the same thing, and that the former pays for the latter. You can have a wide range of interesting taxa in superb enclosures, a successful breeding record, and a huge field operation and none of it will matter if your food is rubbish and you've run out of toilet paper at 11:00am.

 

[Ned]

I think what struck me as odd was that they were impressed by the number of loos not the quality. But if for some reason you need a loo I guess it would make a difference to your day.

 

[Daktari JG]

I'm as zoonerdy as well most of you (certainly not all) but over the last 20 years or so I have come to see that most public attractions (not just zoos) don't have enough toilets, benches shade or drinking fountains. To the casual visitor (which is probably what like 98% of them) those
amenities are going to be as much if not more important than if a zoo has tuataras, spotted linsangs or golden snub nosed monkeys.

 

[Ned]

I'm a zoo nerd but when it comes to other attractions, art galleries, theme parks, most museums etc, I all most never consider their toilet arrangements, cafe yes but toilets no. Maybe I'm odd? the only exception to this would be a music festival where alcohol often leads to long queues for loos.

 

[Zia]

I was thinking about this thread earlier and while ignorance in general (people not reading signs or calling an Orang a Gorilla etc) does get on my nerves a bit - the thing that really irks me is when a child is actually taking an interest and the parents are ignoring them or feeding them rubbish. Feral children are annoying in all walks of life (don't get me started on ppl who allow their kids to run riot in restaurants!) so it is a shame to watch an engaged child become a bored child and lose interest in the amazing animals and environmental information they could be learning.

 

[Andrew Swales]

This post might not be in the correct thread, and I hope the moderators will move it if there is another more appropriate one I have failed to find.

The question of group behaviour came up on another thread last week, and I would like to distribute some details about a visit we had on Thursday last, the 11th July.

This was a pre-booked visit by a Czech photography group of 25 people who were on tour in the UK. Included in the group were keepers from two Czech zoos who had been introduced by their senior management, plus some other Czech zoo keepers who we did not know were coming.

Since opening the Park here in 1990 we have never experienced such bad behaviour - compared to which, any school group pales into complete insignificance. Once on site the group fragmented, and on numerous occasions its members were seen across guard barriers, and we have since received photographs from concerned members of the public - which I will upload if I can work out how.

Warnings were issued repeatedly by members of our staff, with increasing vigour as they were consistently ignored. Eventually at the point where our head-keeper was about to ring the Police, the major part of the group was confronted and threatened with eviction. At the point where the altercation was about to get physical, we were aggressively told that as they had paid to come in they had the right to go wherever they liked as they were photographers.

The group vandalised the time-line display on show in our tiger-tunnel and stole the maps which this included, and offered cash bribes to our staff to be taken into areas to see animals which were in official isolation.

The group and their coach were photographed - and of course we have on file all their details, including those of the organiser who we are told was the ring-leader and responsible for the worst of the behaviour. The incident dissipated only as the zoo closed, and left our staff somewhat dazed that a group of adults should behave in such a way.

I should say that afterwards we had sincere apologies (both on the day and in writing since) from the two keepers, who were also dismayed by the behaviour of most of their group, and were unable to distance themselves from it as it was led by the organiser and had also happened at other venues they had visited.

We have nine coaches of English school-children tomorrow, which I am certain will give no such problems.

 

[Daktari JG]

so you're saying they were not Czech mates

 

[KevinB]

What an awful bunch of idiots. This kind of guys could make people and organizations turn against photographers because of their irresponsible and arrogant behavior. This is the kind of people who look down on people with smaller cameras than the ones they have to compensate for their own failures and the kind that makes people look negatively upon and shoot dirty looks at photographers. This kind of people ruin things for everyone.

As an avid photographer I am deeply ashamed. These idiots should have their cameras impounded and they should be banned for live and in the entire universe from practicing photography. You would have been more than right if you had called the cops on them.

That said, I wouldn't post the pictures of them publicly - given the European privacy laws they could give you major trouble on that. I would avoid letting on publicly that you have those photos.

 

[Andrew Swales]

What an awful bunch of idiots. This kind of guys could make people and organizations turn against photographers because of their irresponsible and arrogant behavior. This is the kind of people who look down on people with smaller cameras than the ones they have to compensate for their own failures and the kind that makes people look negatively upon and shoot dirty looks at photographers. This kind of people ruin things for everyone.

As an avid photographer I am deeply ashamed. These idiots should have their cameras impounded and they should be banned for live and in the entire universe from practicing photography. You would have been more than right if you had called the cops on them.

That said, I wouldn't post the pictures of them publicly - given the European privacy laws they could give you major trouble on that. I would avoid letting on publicly that you have those photos.

The photographs we were sent were taken from the back, so their faces were not visible. The only one person shown slightly from the side can easily be pixelated - but having said that, I haven't yet had the time to look at how to post pictures, and you are right in that there is probably little to be gained by doing so. We have them on file in case anything further comes of it.

 

[TeaLovingDave]

This post might not be in the correct thread, and I hope the moderators will move it if there is another more appropriate one I have failed to find.

I reckon your post is entirely on-topic and as such more than welcome within this thread; although not to quite such an egregious scale, people have cited events of this kind several times within previous pages of this thread.

 

[Hipporex]

The other day at Six Flags while I was stationed at the penguin habitat a women reached over the barrier and tried to pet a bird. Surprise, surprise, she got bit. (she was then escorted out of the park and, I believe, banned from returning)

 

[Goura]

Just wanted to mention that Japanese children visiting zoos demonstrate exemplary behaviour - I was most impressed when visiting Ueno a couple of years ago and only wish this could be a benchmark for how children should always behave when visiting zoos. It's also interesting when you visit zoos in Belgium and the Netherlands. The Belgian children are extremely well behaved, whilst on the other side of the border...let's just say my visit to Burger's and Apenheul weren't quite as enjoyable as they should have been.

 

[KevinB]

Just wanted to mention that Japanese children visiting zoos demonstrate exemplary behaviour - I was most impressed when visiting Ueno a couple of years ago and only wish this could be a benchmark for how children should always behave when visiting zoos. It's also interesting when you visit zoos in Belgium and the Netherlands. The Belgian children are extremely well behaved, whilst on the other side of the border...let's just say my visit to Burger's and Apenheul weren't quite as enjoyable as they should have been.

Japan does have quite a culture of order, discipline and conformity with pretty strict social norms for conduct and so that does not really surprise me.

As far as the comparison between Dutch and Belgian children goes... I think you got lucky because as a regular visitor of zoos in the Netherlands and Belgium that is not my experience. In my opinion Belgian children can be just as noisy and irritating as the Dutch children. I certainly don't generally see the being "extremely well behaved" you mentioned here in Belgium as children give my numerous irritations on most zoo visits. Nor do I notice a truly substantial different with the Dutch children. Maybe some Belgian parents are a bit stricter than some Dutch parents, but in my opinion many parents in both countries most often seriously lack in terms of teaching their children orderly behavior, respect and discipline.

Things tend to get even worse when children are not with their parents but with their teachers or you movement leaders. Those groups tend to be unruly, loud and irritating and I think they are a nuisance. I hate school and youth movement groups at zoos. Zoos should be much stricter on these groups, should only allow them on strict conditions and throw them out after even the smallest violation.

 

[Goura]

I think you got lucky because as a regular visitor of zoos in the Netherlands and Belgium that is not my experience. In my opinion Belgian children can be just as noisy and irritating as the Dutch children.

I bow to your superior experience, but I've certainly noticed a pattern in the 5 or 6 times I've gone from one country to the other when visiting zoos.

 

[ThylacineAlive]

When I was at Bronx the other day I noted an entire family taking turns hitting the glass where a gecko was resting as hard as they could to the point where the animal actually ran away.

~Thylo