Plantasia Tropical Zoo — Attraction in Castle

This is a great day out for families. Situated less than a 10min walk from the train station, it's accessible to those using public transport as well as those in cars which was one of the main draws for us as we were travelling by train. You enter with the main desk in front of you, a cafe to the right (you can pre order pizza to be served here after you've walked around) and a really nice gift shop to the left. The attraction is reasonably priced with both adult and child passes under £10. I was lucky enough to have Tempo Time credits which are accepted meaning our visit cost us nothing. Once you enter the main display zone there are lots of bugs and interactive buttons to look at and kids to play with. This lit cavernous space then opens up into the main 'tropical jungle' zone where the temp and humidity increase a lot (id recommend to wear a t shirt when visiting as it does get rather hot especially when busy!) here you find all sorts of animals both living as well as prehistoric. There's a large pond full of huge koi with a waterfall in the centre of the display with a nice seating area to allow for the kids to explore the crawl spaces and interactive features. There's a bridge and a nice lookout point over the pond you can discover a little later on your walk round. In this main section there are all manor of weird and wonderful tropical plants as well as more recognisable ones such as pineapples, cocoa and rubber plants. You then make your way through a large set of doors into a more arid zone where the meerkats live. The children loved the crawl tunnel which took them right under the meerkats enclosure with a 360 viewing bubble at its end. There's also lots of other lizards and reptiles to view here as well as a lovely interactive sand dig element for the kids and a stinky plant smell test which the kids find highly amusing. From here you go into another zone all about dangerous plants where again there is a fun interactive element and a very amusing photo opportunity with a giant Venus flytrap! Back into the tropical jungle and lots more animals to see (some free roaming birds also) the monkeys were a hit but be prepared to spend a while looking for them! More photo opps and up onto that bridge that goes over the koi pond for a great view. More lizards and even a mini croc and lots of interactive QR codes to gather facts and follow trails. You eventually come out into a much appreciated chill out zone where children and adults alike can cool down and draw pics of all the animals they've seen. On our visit they were running a comp to design your own Plantasia top trump card. This room also houses a chameleon, a tilapia tank and some other animal displays such as a snakes shedded skin. From here you come back out into the cave like entrance albeit on the opposite side where you'll find the toilets and a few more bug displays. You are free to go round as many times as you like but do take plenty of fluids as like already stated you will get very hot! You exit into the gift shop where's there's a good range of Plantasia merchandise and some very cute cuddles. As ever with gift shops there are expensive items but if you're on a budget there are some very cute little momento's for under £2. It took us about an hour and 45 minutes to walk around Plantasia. We didn't stop at all the interactive QR codes on the trail as we had younger children so this could be extended if you've inquisitive slightly older children with you but we all enjoyed the experience. The location is also situated on a square where there's Ninja Warrior, bowling, cinema, eateries and a climbing centre so you could really have a fun filled day here. Well worth visiting for just Plantasia alone though and all 3 children aged 3, 5 & 6 had a great time in this...

Although a beautiful place, the animal welfare is subpar. A bearded dragon was housed with tortoises, highly discouraged in the reptile hobby due to differing gut flora and behaviours. The Rio Fuerte lizard had soiled water immediately after opening which staff should've tended to and it appeared to have been festering in the water for a long while. Both the bearded dragon and the water lizard appeared to have some form of mouth rot due to unsuitable conditions. The caimans were housed in a tiny section compared to the koi pond which was wildly overstocked and had rubbish from the public floating in it.

Birds were allowed to free roam near the leopard cat and caiman exhibits, a stressful environment for both prey and predator species to be in such close proximity in captivity. The macaw was in bad shape with no UV lighting and the keeper was talking more about appearances over conservation and education.

Animals with greater dimension requirements are housed in enclosures smaller than species with lesser dimension requirements and the viewing ease of enclosures is aimed towards very small children, making it difficult to view these enclosures with bad knees or a bad spine as we spent much of the time kneeling down.

Invertebrates were kept in small exo-terra enclosures and a few of the "exhibits" were filled with plastic toys instead of animals. The carnivorous plant section was quite underwhelming as there weren't many carnivorous or poisonous plants to be seen.

The best enclosures were probably given to the marmosets and leopard cat, though the meerkat enclosure was far too humid with no outdoor section.

Minimal staff were present in the exhibition areas making the lack of supervision worrying with such a child-based demographic with enclosure boundaries easily trespassable.

The information on Darwin and Wallace was quite a nice...

Lovely little place and worth a visit, doesn't cost a fortune, but you can easily see everything within an hour - all depends how long your kids attention span is really!

That said, we went on 'National Axolotl Day' with the promise of themed events and discounts on axolotl based items in the gift shop. Our youngest was really excited for this being an axolotl enthusiast but, alas, there were no events and no discounts and just two axolotls on site at the end of the trail.

The biggest disappointment though was the "VIP experience." We paid extra for this so the kids could handle some of the animals, speak to the keeper about them etc, but when we got in the room it was packed where people clearly wandered in hoping for a freebie. Even the keeper commented there were more than she's ever had before, yet didn't bother checking tickets beyond asking everyone if they've paid to take part. Several sheepish looking faces were nonetheless ignored, and one family even conceded that the manager said they "can just go in". This resulted in a rushed experience and the kids only got a very short time with the animals so that the keeper could get through everyone, while we (the parents) decided not to take our turn not to deprive all the children present, despite having paid full price ourselves. "VIP experience"? Far from it. Don't bother paying for this, just try your luck and wander in!

To make matters worse, we complained about this to the manager who came into the room to "check everyone has tickets", clearly not aware one of us was still in there with the kids; he asked if everyone had paid to be there, mocked the complainant, then left without actually checking. The keeper then proceeded to mock the...