Arbuckle Wilderness — Attraction in Davis

Arbuckle Wilderness is one of those unique zoo experiences that allows you to interact with the animals in a safari like experience. As you travel along the road, the various animals will eagerly approach your vehicle and engage with you to get food pellets.

It's a pretty fun and exciting interaction but occasionally kinda intense also because of the size of the animal and its proximity to you and your vehicle. So be aware of your window height at all times as some of the animals have greater reach than others. Signage is posted regularly, letting guests know not to touch animals on the head or roll your windows up on the animals so it seems to be an issue.

I would recommend a higher sitting vehicle like a classic safari vehicle such as a Land Cruiser, Land Rover Defender, Jeep Wrangler, or similar, but it's not absolutely necessary I personally believe it would most definitely add to the experience if you do and probably make for some great pictures for other drivers but anything with a higher ride height, plenty of visibility, functioning windows should be good, and better than average ground clearance should be perfect. I throwing in ground clearance because while the road is pretty well defined, you will encounter areas of rain washout and other natural road imperfections that having better approach, departure, and breakover angles can help keep you moving along without fear or scratching something underneath your vehicle. I will also say that having a vehicle with a low range option will help ascend some of the steeper hill climbs (the park is in the Arbuckle mountains) that are throughout the park.

Things I wish I knew before going on this experience is how long will this take?

That all depends on how many people are in the park and how much feed you start with. I bought the 6 cup option and had little traffic on my trip through the park. So it took me about 75 minutes to travel through the park. Looking back, I wish I had got double the feed or 12 cups to be more generous and have a bit more time with a few of the more exotic animals. I also wish I knew where the halfway and near ending point was so I could be more generous with the feed. So I'm going to say if you can see the camel you're about halfway through and if you can see the giraffe you're about done, so let that feed loose, but should you hold feed to the end there's an area to empty your supply to a group of hungry sheep. If you find yourself needing to use the restroom inside the park, you are in trouble because you are not allowed outside your vehicle at any time, and you will not see or find any restroom facilities inside the animal park. The only restrooms available at Arbuckle Wilderness are located at the gift shop on the right-hand side of the main entrance, so be sure to stop there before entering the drive area. Beyond finding the restrooms, the gift shop has most of the things you'd expect to find in a zoo gift shop and a few snack food and drink options. My final thoughts on this park are that if you are looking for something a bit different than a traditional zoo experience, this is definitely a place to visit. I think it's worth the price of entrance and worth the 90ish minutes it took to get to the park. Is this park perfect? Absolutely not, and you can read plenty of people's opinions of less than stellar experiences, on animal appearance, and facility appearance. But not every place is for everyone, and for my trip, everyone ages 8 to 74 had a great time, we took some amazing pictures and made some really...

I loved this place as a child and took my grown kids when they were little. We wanted to do something fun this weekend with the grandkids and my youngest daughter. I am fully aware that you need to call this place before you go out there. I checked out the website and it’s full of misinformation!! There is no RV site, they sold it but have decided to keep it on the website to share their phone number, that’s nice and all but I had to talk to the manager to find this out because the very sweet girl who answered had no idea. Everything in this park is closed down until Memorial Day weekend except the drive through area due to heavy winds, storms, and fires in Oklahoma…. The website says open in spring. When I spoke with the manager to let them know their website isn’t reflecting that the park is only open to the drive through part he said “I don’t know what you expect me to do, I can’t just open the park cause you want me to” This was not my intentions so I apologized if I gave that impression. I was just trying to be nice and let the man know. He was very rude from the get go. I only asked to speak with him cause I could tell the girl on the phone didn’t know they answers to all my questions because she kept asking everyone else around her and she seemed very confused. I wanted to give my grandkids and my youngest daughter some great memories this weekend by going here but thanks to the rudeness of David, I will not be doing this. You should be able to answer a few simple questions without being rude to the general public when running a business like this. And Yes David! I am from Oklahoma and that’s why I called first before loading up my family and RV and just heading your way! He said “I don’t know where you’re from but here in Oklahoma we’ve had bad weather” Again rude as can be, the website isn’t up to date cause ( it’s just too much for David to keep up with (his words not mine) way too much money to drive all the way out there to only go through the drive through but I wonder if that’s even up to par from how much damage David has said they got…. It’s probably all messed up too. Our family will be spending our money someplace more responsible, respectful, and actually worth the price this...

I remember going here with the family many years back. The family all grown and my dark hair is now gray.I remember feeding the fish and the boardwalk is in bad shape, I will say they need to make some repairs. The family had a blast. Our dog charlie just didn't know what to think about this big bird .The ostrich was large and in charge the llama or alpaca not sure maybe both and donkeys where great got about half way done and our van overheated so we sat there about 40 minutes waiting on it to cool down, enjoying the animals it was great.They must have alpaca coms, because the longer we stay the more ducks, donkeys and alpacas showed up.We started again seen some big deer of some kind large like a elk but looked different and made it almost to the bison before the van was hot again. More ostrichs these big birds put on a show one was dancing with it wings all spread out as the worker filled the water trough. Once again we pulled over waiting for the van to cool. We watched as two ostrich fought each other it was more show than fight but the family thought it was awesome to see. We started our adventure around 12pm and now it's after 4pm the place closes at 5pm. So when the van was ready we had to keep moving which was sad. We had to pass by the giraffe and when we came up to the zebra, one of them ran over to the van as if to say I have been waiting all day for you to come home a lot like my dog greats me after a long work day. I wished we could have stopped but the vans electric fan has gone and if we keep moving it stays cooler. Our dog was totally good with the experience I guess he thought the llamas where just big dogs.We are going to return sometime I fixed the van it ready. Listen I said it need repairs but if you go you will have a blast. I can't wait until we return to finish our experience 90% of the animals will come right up to you. We didn't see any mistreated animals. And none of them looked under fed. The road that takes you through has some rough spots just take your time you will be fine. Maybe the next time we go we can...