5 star review with a 1 star section. So, the Zoo! How exciting, animals and plants of all kinds, forget noah, forget 2 by two, this Zoo is the ultimate feel good day out. Sunshine not garunteed, however, the zoo itself is clean, well organised and well laid out. Lots of 'keepers' (don't know their real job titles) are around and all knowledgeable, we first met joe a 'keeper' up by the huuuuge tortoises. She knew all the names of the animals from the 2017 bbc series the zoo, which is a mocumentary based around the animals at Paignton Zoo! My two god sons (6&4) are really into the show, Joe told us that she knew all the names and that they use different names for the animals for the show, they even made kiondu (a gorilla who is low in the pecking order) the leader of the silver backs because of how tough and grumpy he looks (he is Jurgen in the show, our God sons were especially excited to see him as I'm told his catch phrase is "shut up!" 🙄😂) So, why did we visit? We were there on a camping trip, we had an experience day booked at the zoo for my fiance and her bezzy mate nikster! Lucky devil's were going to feed some giraffe's 👍😊 We had to meet someone at 1 in a hut near the gibbons. So we did, we met Tracy who is an experience coordinator for the giraffes, Tracy is a credit to the Zoo. She was helpful, chatty and insightful, she fielded all the questions from our God sons around the zoo as we walked up to the giraffes, these weren't always about the animals, although most were specifically about 'jurgen' some questions she fielded were also about life in general and she did fantastically she even helped me too, she had a neck fan headset type thingy on and I've been wanting to buy for some time but didn't want to get it when it may be rubbish, turns out she was very happy to let me test it out, she popped it onto medium and let me test it out! Was like a cool hug and intensely satisfying to my heat needs. Tracy was brilliant, she really was, she took the ladies behind a roped area and she was (I'm told) sooo knowledgeable, she was patient and understanding. My fiance who is very hard to please said that the experience was enjoyable and that Tracy was informative! High praise, if you knew her you'd get it! The giraffes were gentle and yet strong and healthy, my fiance says the whole thing was Soooo brilliant she'd recommend anyone do it! Now why would I score any part of it a 1 after what I've said above? Well as afore-mentioned, we had an experience booked, but booking it was the issue in fact it was a headache. We come to Devon camping and so we had a weeks window. My fiance had booked this as a 30th birthday gift for her bestie. But once you buy the experience from buy a gift or whatever then you have to make contact with the Zoo to get it actually secured and booked in! This process started 3 weeks before we left to come to Paignton!! We were either not answered, or we were told the person wasn't there for some reason or another and they'd take a message, pass it on and the person would call back this NEVER HAPPENED! we then decided to drive to the zoo on the Monday after we arrived! My fiance was told it was all booked up until the Friday, luckily we were still here so we booked. We then we're told, oh that's not booked it's just pencilled in, we had to email to state our intention to come on the Friday for the experience... So we did, this was then booked and we received an email with all the ins and outs of what to do that day. Including the fact that there will be some specially reserved parking for us! We arrived in the morning, we see mo who says she knows nothing about the reserved parking, but the email states clearly that we are to tell the attendant we are there for an experience and they will show us to our reserved parking... Everyone, including the experience manager (who was rude) said this wasn't a thing. And then the manager called my fiance to apologise as he was rude and was wrong, there should be parking reserved, luckily the rest of the zoo made up for this poor part.