Greenview Park & Zoo — Attraction in Ontario

Ugh. I want to like this place but I just don't. I first visited in 2010 with my nieces. Due to the horrible condition of some of the animals and their enclosures, I said I'd NEVER go back. But here we are in 2018 and a lot of families i know rave about it so I decided to give it another chance with my own children.

The property itself it a good size. Lots of parking and a little restaurant at the front with fast food type fare and ice cream. People are welcome to pack their own food and use the picnic areas, which is wonderful especially if you have a big family or special diet. There are rental wagons for a reasonable price.

There are a few nice animal enclosures. A few. Not many are the appropriate for the animals in them (4 white lions share a tiny enclosure. One of the females had awful sores all over, particularly down her tail) There are some enclosures that literally look like they have NEVER, EVER been cleaned before. Every bird cage is absolutely disgusting!!! One example: there were 2 amazon parrots who had a dead mouse floating in their only water dish, which is on the floor of their enclosure filled with poop and rotten food. I can't even think about it without getting upset.

People bring their own food for the animals. This is fun... I get it. People love to feed the animals BUT I watched people feeding things to exotic animals such as: Corn Pops, Hickory Sticks, bread, Doritos. It must make them sick!!!! This stuff is not even healthy for humans. If Greenview is going to let people bring their own food for the animals, they should at least TELL people what is okay and what NOT to feed them. Put a sign up! Fruits and veggies and things that would be in their natural diets!

Shakespeare Land is in a sad state. A lot of the little buildings are in need of repair and a fresh coat of paint. The center does boast a nice little natural habitat for wildlife.

Playground area is the ONLY reason my review is 3 stars instead of 1. There are some really nice, new playground structures here! There is a zip line for the kids. A fairly new splash pad is a great addition to the area! There is a little ball pit and the kids think it is a blast but it is quite shallow so beware that no one jumps in and thinks they are going to sink down into a soft landing. There is a hard wooden floor in there not even half way down.

I think this place would be smart to start focusing on quality over quality and send a lot of the exoctic animals to zoos or sanctuaries that will care for them properly.

Overall, there are some great things about Greenview Aviaries but they are sadly overshadowed by the bad and I highly doubt I will...

HONEST REVIEW AND BREAKDOWN

Animal welfare: 2/10 This is the big concern. I have some knowledge in this area, and many of the animals do not seem to be in great shape. I noticed a lot of the animals exhibiting extreme repetitive behaviours. Many enclosures were too small and/or lacked an "escape" from crowding guests. Most of the enclosures lacked necessary stimulation. (toys) Enclosures also need more frequent cleaning, and the water was not clean. Also, I saw people feeding the animals all kinds of junk just about everywhere. Staff need to monitor this more closely. All of this said, not all of the animals were in terrible conditions and there are (unfortunately) worse zoos.

Education: 1/10 In my opinion, the main focus of a zoo (after animal welfare) should be education and conservation. This was clearly not the case at this zoo. Many exhibits were unmarked, and those which had signs had little information. In some cases the information was misleading/borderline incorrect. Some exhibits were just marked something like "African parrot" or "baboons" neither of which are the name of a specific species. There was no other form of education, no staff were seen educating guests.

Gift shop: 7/10 The gift shop was about what you'd expect, lots of plushies, some shirts, post cards, magnets, etc.

Restaurant: 2/10 Initially I thought the prices were only mildly overpriced, typical of a zoo. But in addition to being overpriced, the food was very low quality. I think the $4 hotdog was a chicken hotdog. Also, the restaurant was FILLED with flies which was disconcerting.

Facilities: ?/10 There was only one bathroom facility and I did not use it. Notably, there were none in the restaurant.

Accessibility: I suspect low I'm not disabled, but a lot of the paths were rough gravel. I suspect this wouldn't be great for someone in a wheel chair.

Splash pad: 7/10 I didn't go with kids, but the splash pad looked pretty good.

Maintenance/upkeep: 2/10 Lots of rusted, old looking fences. One in particular seemed like it was about to fall over. The zoo shows its age.

NOTEWORTHY Apparently the zoo has new owners (as of last year) who want to improve the welfare in the zoo. The conditions could improve, but currently it is not in...

If I could give zero stars I definitely would. I want to start off my saying there where no workers, legitimately the only worker I saw was the person who you pay to get in. It’s a small property and I truly think big animals like tigers for example should not have been there! All of the animals I saw looked sad, hungry and even scared, the tiger was literally pacing back in fourth due to stress. The kangaroo was extremely skinny and btw there were no food or water in sight. At the entrance the first animal I saw was the goats, donkey and if anyone went close to them they would all come running and opening their mouths and I’m assuming for food. If they were feed properly I don’t think they would genuinely be that desperate for food, one of the baby goats was trying to jump over the fence , and a note there is one very short fence holding them back. The tiger was in a very small cage and for some reason it kept looking at this one person even when that person went very far away it kept looking, and jumping and hitting the fence. Everyone got scared because it looking like the fence was very weak it was a normal barb wire fence which could easily be broken if the tiger got mad. The only nice thing I have to say about it is that there is a nice place to sit and eat. Another thing that I felt was weird is that some of the farm animals were outside the the area that they were put in and walking around and like I said earlier no workers in sight so someone could have just grabbed the chicken, put it in there car. Overall the animals all looked like they were being mistreated and literally no protection against the animals. I can understand the farm animals not having a whole glass wall for example but a tiger? A whole tiger put in a small cage with barb wire fence. I would not recommend this for anyone but specifically not people with...