Welsh Mountain Zoo — Attraction in Colwyn Bay

Disappointed! I don’t usually ever write a poor review, however I feel this is necessary. We visited on a sunny weekend in March. I heard a lot of good things about this zoo, their website is fantastic, and I know they do A LOT for zoo conservation /animal welfare, so I was excited to visit. However, it’s a lot different in person to what it is portrayed. It’s a shame because the location is beautiful, mimicking a natural habitat extremely well, and staff are friendly and seem to care a lot. It seems the zoo is having A LOT of maintenance … walkways were closed off, animal experience walk throughs were closed off, viewing points closed off, the tiger enclosure was getting “improved” however this just looked like a building site. I also have no idea if the tiger was able to access their outdoor space due to such maintenance. When trying to view the tiger, there was only 1 small viewing window which overlooked a room the size of a small bedroom. It seemed evident there was only 1 tiger as we waited a while to see if there were others. This 1 tiger was sat on a platform in a very enclosed indoor space where enrichment was sparse. A further concern was the snow leopard. It was evident that this area of the zoo had recently had some improvements and were currently still in that process. I did notice the snow leapard was in an indoor enclosure with little to no enrichment - I have attached a picture of this. Whilst this species is a solitary animal, it would be extremely beneficial to provide environmental enrichment to aid their physical and cognitive abilities. I was also disappointed as there was no access to see the penguins- only from very afar.. again no way to view them in their pool as very bad visibility to visitors. It was nice to see the bears were able to exhibit their natural behaviours during feeding time- again, their outdoor space seems a little small. Parking was free which was good. Unfortunately we were just extremely disappointed, and I did have concerns in regards to specific species welfare. We spent £36 for tickets for the two of us to walk round basically a park with very limited access to enclosures or the possibility of visibly seeing the animals. Whilst it is understandable that the zoo is out of its ‘peak season’ ,and every visitor runs the risk of not seeing the animals, it was extremely confusing to not see more than one of specific species or not at all. Either display on your website or have a notice at the entrance that you are currently carrying out maintenance and as a result visibility of animals will be sparse! Otherwise visitors expect the same all year round experience. Whilst the £36 felt wasted l just hope that the zoo does what they say and puts their ticket prices towards...

I visit the Welsh mountain zoo alone early afternoon and I can honestly say that it will be the last time I visit it. I did not like the experience one bit.

The paper map exhibits were numbered here there and everywhere instead of numerical logical order which makes it easier to follow. For example instead of 1,2,3 etc the animal numbers were 1,3,7,9 etc. This isn’t good and is just messy. Also the paths on the maps could have been numbered and perhaps arrowed with a suggested walking route. The restaurants I saw were closed. I was hoping to have a bite to eat. The cartoon character sign posts of the animals would have been better if the English language was used - more and better communication to find all the animals. Such as signs saying this way for… arrows pointing, signs showing path numbers would help. I spent more time trying to find the animals on the map than seeing them or reading about them. I'm sure a couple of staff were chilling in the internal monkey viewing enclosure? The gents and disabled toilets were below standards (see photos) the toilets situated under probable yet another closed restaurant. I didn’t get to see some of the animals because of the mapping issue (see points 1 &3.) The hut things with the semi circle like roof near the spider monkey enclosure which according to your map says ‘new for Easter 25’, one of them it was closed and the other one hard to get to (yet again lack of signs and probably closed (unlike the map advertises) A few of the animals like someone pointed out on Google review weren’t visible such as the bear and certainly couldn’t find the red panda thing, or the red squirrels for that matter. It's unacceptable to have or still have some of the walk throughs locked off, this only added to the ruined experience. Nor is it acceptable for rubbish to be lying on the ground instead of being in the bin it was lying next to. It’s also unacceptable to have a warning sign saying although you close at 6, we have to leave at 5 or our cars will be locked in! What kind of customer service is this? Why can’t a proper payment entry system be set up inside instead of the check point Charlie/toll bridge boxes? If it wasn’t for the fact that most of the £19 entry fee goes towards the animals, I would probably have asked...

Visited the zoo on Sunday 4th May as a family of 5, we had looked at the prices on line and decided to go with paying at the gate on arrival as this was the cheapest option, price worked out at £71.70, however on arrival at the zoo we were told it was £89.00!! When pointing this difference out I was told that I had either read the prices wrong or had misinterpreted them. To avoid disappointing the kids I paid up and we went in, to say I was disappointed is an understatement, the tiger was in a shed basically as the enclosure was being upgraded (it was being upgraded 3years ago when we last visited) the snow leopards were nowhere to be seen, the bears too were no where to be seen despite returning to them 3 times during our visit, the alligators have gone, (the main thing my grandson wanted to see) and replaced with a butterfly house, the children’s pet corner has also gone, the lemur enclosure was locked up, the penguins and flamingos were isolated due to avian flu and the once decent birds of prey display wasn’t on. The seagulls were in full attendance as usual making sitting down with a picnic impossible, surely some covered area could be provided for this, we actually sat in the chimpanzees house to eat our picnic, not ideal but free from the seagulls. We have been frequent visitors here for many years and to see how it had changed so much was quite upsetting really, I don’t think that we will be returning in the future, the scenery is breathtaking here but unfortunately the point of visiting is to see the animals and this sadly was very much a poor...