What zoos do you regret visiting?

Living Treasures "Wild" Animal Park. I always forget about it and decided to revisit it as an adult and... wow. Macaws were not in any aviaries, assuming they are clipped. The aviary was filled with small parrots but only a single budgie was seen (generally considered unethical to keep them alone). No parrot had any toys and their enclosures felt pretty barren. Red Ruffed Lemur seemed to be alone on a decently small island but I didn't stick around to really confirm that, bit hard to tell from the distance for me. I also felt like the bat 'house' was kinda small and really should of had some doors to block out some light. Not the worse facility I have really seen or heard about but was just underwhelming. I certainly still enjoyed feeding animals carrots.
 
For me it was the edessa reptile park. It is a small reptile house (it was all indoors). It was dark and the animals were living in average towards bad conditions, with just the basics provided (water, food, shelter for hiding, though the last one not always)
 
There are few places where I have gone and felt like it was pure neglect and a money grab with no care or effort. Even the zoos I've visited that were in the most need of some TLC did appear to have proper staff/handling procedures, an effort into making what exhibit spaces they did have at least somewhat livable and enriching for their animals, and at least an honest attempt at making the experience educational.

The one place I have visited that I sincerely regret and saw no sign of any of the aforementioned points was Space Farms Zoo and Museum in New Jersey. I mean, just an absolutely heartbreaking, creepy, bad experience overall.

Let me say that my rule is to 1.) review information and articles about a facilitly before visiting and 2.) within reason, give most facilities one chance to see it with my own eyes and make my own decisions. In my defense, my visit to Space Farms was a few years ago now and was before I knew how to access USDA records and such.

This zoo was appalling. The first thing I saw when exiting the gift shop entry was a fox in a literal cage. I do not use cage lightly, and there is no other way to describe it. This fox's cage was barely large enough for it to turn around, which it was doing over and over and over. I have never seen an animal exhibit repetitive behavior that extreme before.

The zoo claims many of their primates are "rescued" from animal testing facilities, but it is apparent that the companies just sell their primates to roadside zoos once they're finished with their testing. The company wins every time, because they make money on an animal they were just going to kill anyways. This is by no means a rescue. The olive baboons were in a tiny little pen with a single ball to play with, which the male way batting around very slowly and lethargically. The lions were in a space that seemed almost the same size as the space for animals a fraction of their size, barely in a space large enough to climb up on the lone little structure there was for them.

Oh, and I can't forget the morbidly obese racoons. The zoo lets you buy animal crackers [yes, human animal crackers] to throw into the exhibits like the racoons, bears and monkeys. It's really terrible. When I arrived, the zoo seemed pretty normal other than the fox, and the bear exhibits were decent size. I assusmed the place was just a little run down but decent and bought some animal food thinking that it was animal grade and I did feed the bears a few crackers before realizing how messed up the entire situation was and threw the rest out. I did this before I saw the rest of the zoo and how truly unsettling it is.

The zoo prides itself on being the only holder of Hokkaido bears outside of Japan, and displays "letters" from the Japanese goverment commending them for their contributions to helping save this subspecies of bear from extinction. This was also the major thing that came up when researching the zoo, so I had some hope that were was at least some conservation happening here. Their "Hokkaido bears" looked nothing like the images of this subspecies when I googled them. They looked more like hybrids between brown and black bears [species they also have at the zoo], and it's clear to me that all this Japan stuff is almost certainly a big lie to make visitors think they're contributing to some kind of good conservation work.

All that being said, we didn't even get to the "museum" yet. Taxidermy of megafauna from Africa and Asia that I can't be certain was hunted legally, and the worst yet, a creepy and unsettling obsession with Nazi memorabilia. Lots and lots of flags and displays for it, plus old minstrel and racist dolls and depictions from the Civil War era.

My visit to Space Farms haunts me to this day. I cannot stress this enough: STAY AWAY. Do NOT give these people your money or your support. They are probably the most unethical zoo in the northeast, and I'm shocked they're allowed to still operate. I have learned A LOT in my travels since, and Space Farms was one of the first zoos I visited when first starting my zoo adventures. I'm proud to say I would never take a trip like this one again and that I have the proper perspective to spot red flags a lot easier now.
 
Nürnberg zoo. I visited a few months ago with my family.

Don't get me wrong, the place is beautiful but I went in very wrong moment: first the dolphin lagoon which was my main focus was under renovation so I could only see their dolphins in their tiny indoor pool... Awful. Then also lot of enclosures were empty (no snow leopard also which was another big point for me, only a sign saying the last one passed recently!). Some other enclosures also under renovation... At the end I saw very few animals, my family was mad and I was very disappointed :(
 
Carson Springs Wildlife Foundation

went for a Tour and then on an open house. Mainly to see the rare in zoo species, like Jackals (no show on both) and all the small cats.

But everything about the place felt sketchy. Many of the enclosures, while big, felt very bare bones. Not to mention that they had a White Lion cub who they wouldn’t disclose the place where they got her (likely a private breeder). And they were trying to breed a white and tabby tiger.

everything about the place left me feeling very off put
 
If I'm being honest, none. Before I visit any zoo or aquarium, I do research on it to get an idea of what it's like. Most of the time, even before I get there, I already know whether it's AZA-accredited (they usually are), and have a general sense of what the layout is, what the exhibits are like, what species are present, etc. I also completely avoid roadside zoos, even if I know there's a species there I haven't seen yet (I can usually find it somewhere else anyway). I live near several roadside/dodgy looking facilities that in my five or so years of living in North Carolina, I have never visited and flat-out refuse to.
 
I can’t say I ever regret visiting a zoo once, but there are several I have visited that I regret that they exist.

More and more I only visit zoos for a specific porpoise, for instance an aspect of exhibit or facility design or for conservation work they do, so am unlikely to encounter any I would regret visiting in general.
 
Franklin Drive Thru Safari. I used to go there a lot to trade some of the exotic animals i used to have at a ranch next door to my house outside Austin. But after my last visit with my mom and Grandmother, I Googled the name of the owner Jason Clay and was flabbergasted to discover many criminal allegations about him and the facility's animal welfare. The parking lot area has countless depressing unenriching cages for their monkeys. I never went again for that reason. I really really really find the US roadside zoos so appalling and I now downright refuse to go near any of them. I now strictly direct my focus on and attend AZA- affiliated facilities.
 
I agree with MRJ above - I don't think I've ever regretted visiting a zoo or aquarium just a single time, but I've come away from a couple never wanting to go again. Chief among those is the now-closed Gulf World Marine Park in Panama City Beach, FL, which I've railed against on here before. While I feel for the staff, who I have no doubt were underpaid and overworked, the owners of that facility gave grossly inadequate care and space to their animals and deserved to lose them and the business. I am very glad that their creatures, especially their rough-toothed dolphins, have mostly found much better homes.
 
The only zoo I truly have mixed and somewhat regretful feelings about is Pakawi Park, previously known as and still often called the Olmense Zoo, located in the hamlet of Olmen in the town of Balen, Antwerp province near the border with Limburg province, Belgium.

It is a zoo with a questionable history and questionable and less than ideal exhibits have always been there. When I first visited as a kid in the late 1990's the place was truly awful - like 19th century postage stamp collection or roadside zoo level awful - even when compared to the at time often not great exhibits at city zoos like Antwerp. It is not that anymore but less than ideal to downright bad exhibits have continued to exist and still exist there. The zoo was actually at one point temporarily closed for animal welfare reasons by the government - this was among other things due to many violations of legal exhibit sizes, dirty exhibits and hand-rearing of big cats cubs.

I have visited the zoo several times both before and after the temporary closure, my last visit being during the covid era. They did not do well with implementing covid restrictions and rules and I did not have a good experience there at the time, feeling at several times during those visits downright unsafe. It was bad enough I actually contacted the town of Balen and the local police at the time.

I have not gone back to the place since, even if it isn't that far from where I live. The experiences I had during covid are not the only reason - the other major reason is that some long-expected and much needed updates to the zoo, the new primate exhibits, have turned out rather disappointing, uninspired, bland and sadly again less than ideal and not sufficiently future proof.

The zoo just does not seem able to improve at a consistent and sufficient rate. On top of that the current owner, who took over a few years ago, is currently on trial for sex crimes, including with teens, and he seems to be a highly sketchy and barely competent person. I have heard very little good about the state of the zoo and its exhibits over the last couple of years, it all very much sounds like this place continues to be more than a bit of a train wreck not exactly heading towards improvement or a good or long future. They are certainly not succeeding at becoming a decent smaller modern zoo.

For many years I believed - or perhaps more correctly wanted to believe - this place could truly improve and become a decent smaller modern zoo and leave behind its checkered past. I have given up on that hope now, and I regret using this as a partial justification for going there and supporting this zoo. Right now it looks unlikely I will be going there again, I certainly do not feel much like doing it unless something changes very majorly.
 
Crocodiles of the World - but not because there's anything wrong with it: it's a very interesting collection and I must return to one day. I just chose the wrong time on the wrong day - opening time on August 3rd 2021. It was in the school holidays after the end of lockdown and there were lots of families with young children who were delighted to have a day out and to see all those exciting crocodiles. Unfortunately the site is quite small and the paths between the enclosures are rather narrow, so in some places I was virtually knee-deep in small, noisy children (not badly behaved, just excited). I couldn't concentrate properly at all. I only managed a few poor photos but I tried to see as much as I could, before leaving after less than 2 hours. Fortunately Cotswold Falconry Centre is not too far away and it was much more tranquil.
 
Strongly regret ever visiting Marineland Canada. It was neat to see such large groups of Belugas, but seeing a seal aimlessly swimming circles in a dark tank, Kiska by herself, Bison and deer sitting catatonic with little vegetation, water or any enrichment, bears standing in a moat begging for food from guests....
Despite situation with the remaining Belugas, I'm very glad this place has shut down.
 
I had time for one zoo stop while driving from Connecticut to northern Maine. A coin toss between Maine Wildlife Park and York’s Wild Kingdom. York’s Wild Kingdom “won” and I lost.

I regret that visit (especially as I had been to York’s about 25 years earlier…and it had not improved).

I still haven’t been to the Maine Wildlife Park.
 
Pleistohorse said:
I had time for one zoo stop while driving from Connecticut to northern Maine. A coin toss between Maine Wildlife Park and York’s Wild Kingdom. York’s Wild Kingdom “won” and I lost.

I regret that visit (especially as I had been to York’s about 25 years earlier…and it had not improved).

I still haven’t been to the Maine Wildlife Park.
Click to expand...

Compared to York, the wildlife park looks like paradise for the residents aside from one remaining corn crib enclosure for a Lynx. There is a newer, larger, much nicer lynx habitat as well so I think the crib is more of a holding/temporary situation.
 
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