Seeing all the animals at Whipsnade Zoo

I feel like we always go to see some sort of animals during the Easter break. Last Easter we went to the London Zoo, so this time we went to the Whipsnade Zoo, which is also a conservation that has a lot of different animals, a train ride, a butterfly garden, an aquarium, and so much more. As we went during Easter, they had some Easter-related activities but are honestly hosting a bunch of different activities all year long, so there is always something to do.

We entered Whipsnade Zoo and got our map along with the Easter Activity trail. This trail challenged us to use some riddles to find 5 eggs hidden around the main area of the zoo, getting a stamp and finding a letter. Once you have completed this task, you can enter the Activity Tent, where you can color in a Easter hat and get a chocolate bar. This was a fun little activity – I really liked that the pens were attached to the boxes that you needed to find, the hints were good, and the stamps were fun! Robin and Amelia both really enjoyed spotting the eggs and trying to guess the secret word, though they both did wish the prize was a chocolate egg and not a chocolate bar.

With the Easter activity aside, we really wanted to walk around and see some animals. The zoo itself is massive, but we decided to start at the aquarium and butterfly house. This aquarium had lots of different fish and fish tanks, along with some reptiles as well. There were lots of different facts and interactives, which Robin enjoyed reading to us all. I quite liked the Look For Me stickers on the reptile cages, that felt very child-friendly. When we entered the butterfly house, I was floored. This is the best butterfly house we’ve been in. There were large birds walking around, butterflies everywhere, and the perfect amount of people inside. We spied so many butterflies, including ones with clear wings. It was fantastic!

From there, we headed over to the Red Panda enclosure, as that’s always a crowd favorite, before walking around the monkey forest. As with any zoo, sometimes the animals themselves weren’t out.. When we got to the monkey enclosures, we were a little disappointed they weren’t around, but continued our walk seeing a bunch of other animals. When we got to the back of the building, the zoo keeper who’s feeding the monkeys let us know that she was going to feed them in a moment, so we should make our way to the viewing platform. When we got there, all of the monkeys were running out of hiding and we even got to see a few babies. There were lots of interaction areas in this zone; from toys to learn how monkeys interact to each other to climbing frames for a bit of a break. The monkey bit was what Kai was looking forward to, so we were glad to see them!

We then went to see the bigger animals; yaks, rhinos and camels, before we took a moment to grab some snacks and get on the train. The train at Whipsnade Zoo is a separate ticket fee and runs every half hour. We boarded it, which told us all about their zoo animals and took us through a bunch of enclosures where the animals were very close. The deer, which you cannot really see otherwise, were very fun to look at and a bunch of birds were calling to us when we entered their enclosure. We also got to see the wallabies, which seemed to be escaping wherever they were meant to be, and had babies in their pouches!

The Whipsnade Zoo also had flamingos, zebras, giraffes, and so many more animals that we got to get quite close too. Amelia really loved the otters, which were all cuddled together when we saw them. It was easily a full day out just visiting the animals and taking in everything they were doing in their enclosures. The place itself is very vast and all of the enclosures feel like very good sizes, which is always a plus. There were plenty of members of staff dotted around to help out too. We didn’t go to any of the talks at Whipsnade Zoo, but they had a different one basically every hour, if you are into that!

Whipsnade Zoo is a very full, fun zoo that has a lot to offer. You could easily spend a whole day there and still not see everything. It was great to learn about all they are doing to get animals back into the wild as well.

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!