Zoo memberships

[Falconhoof]

I'm looking at getting a zoo membership, and I'm trying to decide between Twycross Zoo (10 miles away) and Colchester Zoo (140 miles away). The obvious choice seems to be Twycross, but the Colchester Zoo membership provides access to more collections (Twycross included).

So, I was wondering what are the other advantages of being a member, other than access to other collections? What would you do, Zoochatters?! I'm also curious to know of people's experiences with these memberships, and whether or not they'd be recommended?

 

[Indlovu]

I'm looking at getting a zoo membership, and I'm trying to decide between Twycross Zoo (10 miles away) and Colchester Zoo (140 miles away). The obvious choice seems to be Twycross, but the Colchester Zoo membership provides access to more collections (Twycross included).

So, I was wondering what are the other advantages of being a member, other than access to other collections? What would you do, Zoochatters?! I'm also curious to know of people's experiences with these memberships, and whether or not they'd be recommended?

I would go with your local zoo, ultimately you'll be able to visit Twycross a lot more frequently, bearing in mind that a lot of the reciprocal memberships only allow you to make one visit.

As a Chester member, I wholly recommend zoo memberships. We get in excess of twenty visits per year, plus one or two of the reciprocals, for the price of four visits on a normal ticket. There are also a variety of other benefits such as shop/restaurant discounts and members' days, and I'm sure Twycross must offer something similar seeing as we have used our reciprocal membership to get in before.

 

[Shorts]

It depends, are you likely to visit Twycross a lot or are you the sort of person that over a year will travel and visit a load of zoos throughout the UK? If you travel a lot then, given it offers more reciprocal zoos Colchester might be the better deal financially -some of their two year deals work out really cheap if you travel a lot. I've heard of being reciprocal visits being restricted but I'm yet to encounter it myself (I'd be interested to learn of anyone else has).

I'm roughly in a similar situation to yourself (Twycross is my closest zoo and Colchester is a long way away). Historically, up until about six years ago I was always a member of Twycross but got fed up of paying money to an organisation, which in my opinion at the time, seemed clueless and didn't know how to spend money well. For this reason I switched to a membership at Colchester which was always developing/expanding and knew how to spend money effectively (which, by and large, they have continued). Since then Colchester always seem to offer me an irresistible renewal offer so I've had no motivation to cease being a member. I usually visit Colchester a couple of days annually and Twycross a little more (say three or four times)-being where I am (geographically) I can get to a lot of zoos within two hours drive (some of which reciprocals) so I don't feel the need to visit Twycross excessively to "get my money's worth".

Colchester sends out a nice magazine three times a year and offers some nice members events too plus, as mentioned before, they offer a lot of reciprocal opportunities (a holiday in the West Country results in saving a fortune with free entry to Bristol, Paignton, Living Coasts and Newquay).

 

[Shorts]

I would go with your local zoo, ultimately you'll be able to visit Twycross a lot more frequently, bearing in mind that a lot of the reciprocal memberships only allow you to make one visit.

I've heard this a lot of times but have never personally experienced it or heard of it being enforced, does anyone know if anywhere has strict policies on reciprocal visits and polices them?

 

[TeaLovingDave]

I've heard this a lot of times but have never personally experienced it or heard of it being enforced, does anyone know if anywhere has strict policies on reciprocal visits and polices them?

I've never liked to make a big thing about mentioning this fact, in case it contributes to the policy *starting* to be fully enforced

 

[pipaluk]

I've heard this a lot of times but have never personally experienced it or heard of it being enforced, does anyone know if anywhere has strict policies on reciprocal visits and polices them?

It seems to me that the only zoos that are specified as one visit are Marwell & Chester. Marwell's list of other zoos only says 'at least one' for all the others. I have heard that the 2 zoos mentioned have suffered from their regulars buying Paignton & Belfast memberships in the past because they were much cheaper. Belfast, less than half most of the others was removed from the scheme about 3 years ago.
I've never had my Marwell card recorded at any of the other 6 zoos i've visited, though there's only one where that would matter to me really.

 

[Falconhoof]

Colchester sends out a nice magazine three times a year and offers some nice members events too plus, as mentioned before, they offer a lot of reciprocal opportunities (a holiday in the West Country results in saving a fortune with free entry to Bristol, Paignton, Living Coasts and Newquay).

This is one of the things swaying me towards Colchester, I have already booked a holiday in Devon later in the year so will be trying to fit in a few of these!

 

[dean]

I used to be a member of The association of British wild animal keepers -though I was a guest not a keeper- they had free access to nearly all other zoos. and I used it a lot, but I think it was stopped in the end for all but professional zoo staff.

I also had Colchester gold card for a few years, though rarely used the reciprocal visit part.My partner isn't so zoo interested- I don't think many people actually do, most folk get one for a free entry to the local zoo,especially when their children are small. Life is full of special offers that hook us in then don't get taken up.
It's possibly not worth the zoo recording things like this, but with scanners and other electronic devices it would be quite simple to enforce. It may also help to go out of season or mid week, then at least some one is in the zoo and buying food etc.

 

[Falconhoof]

Thanks for the input and advice guys! I'm going to go with the Twycross membership, as it is the closest and will be my most visited zoo anyway. Plus, looking further into it Colchester has only three more collections on its reciprocal visit list; Bristol, HWP and Rotterdam. I don't see myself visiting any of those three in the next year, so I'm not really missing anything!

 

[Pertinax]

I used to be a member of The association of British wild animal keepers -though I was a guest not a keeper- they had free access to nearly all other zoos. and I used it a lot, but I think it was stopped in the end for all but professional zoo staff.

I was a member too for many years- in the same category. They used to publish a list of all the collections in the UK on the back of 'Ratel' that you could visit under their scheme- it was virtually all of them apart from the odd few. Some years ago the list disappeared and I increasingly found problems about entry at some of the collections that used to participate. I think this was at least partly due to the financial climate. Howletts/PL did still honour it quite recently though. I stopped joining as there was little other benefit.

 

[dean]

I dropped out for 2 silly reasons firstly I was then breeding poison dart frogs and, lost 10 of my animals within a weekend followed shortly after by a power cut which did for my tropical fish and rocket frog set up, when we were away for a long weekend (I kept them in an outside "zoo shed") I gave up animals for a long time after that.
Also they changed the format from booklet to fullscap and i didn't like it nearly so much. How shallow am I .........

 

[Julz]

I've never had the membership thing enforced either. In fact in one zoo we got chatting near the end of the day and mentioned not seeing everything and were told to come back the next day if we wanted. As the woman said we'd been there all day, bought lunch and a couple of coffees (it was freezing) and I always buy a few things in the gift shop when we go somewhere new so they'd made plenty from us. If we came back the next day and they let us in free they were still making because we'd spend money again. Don't know if that's partly because it was a cold winter weekday as well so there was hardly anyone there - maybe different on a bank holiday weekend in the summer!