Hattiesburg Zoo — Attraction in Hattiesburg

My son and I visited the zoo the 19th of April 2024, a Friday. Tears come to my eyes as I type this review. My son has autism among other challenges. He had a major " red" meltdown moment that included a verbal and physical attack towards me. That ended with him running away from me and I was unable to catch him. A worker asked me in the midst of the " red meltdown " if I needed help. She encourage me by sharing with me that her son is autistic, that it gets better and let anyone of the workers know if I ended up needing assistance. When he ran away another worker stopped, called on the radio to inform the staff of the situation and once he was found she took me to him. The worker that found him was extremely understanding to him and me. She helped me get him to calm down to "yellow," actually all the way to "green", his happy place. She asked what could help him leave on a happy note. He told her riding on the train. She took us to the train and on the way got him something to drink. Once we got to the train, she explained the situation to the train operator. He allowed him to sit next to him on the train ride. She told me this would give me an opportunity to exhale a moment before our drive back to Mobile Al. I hugged her and thanked them for their simple kindness and non judgements. In the climate we live in today, that is extremely rare. So it was a blessing and a breathe of fresh air! With all that being said, allow me to add last but not least the zoo itself was AWESOME as well! Thanks a million times over to the entire staff! We look forward to coming...

I generally love the Hattiesburg Zoo; however, my wife and I visited yesterday evening to take my brother to do the gem mining activity because he had never done it before. So, we thought that we would buy the $100 Bonanza Bucket to share because it was supposed to include a ton of gems and specimens, but we were majorly disappointed in the Bucket. Our Bucket had only a little more in it that their mother load bag which is only $20 (we would know because we have bought several of the mother load bags before). When we saw this we took the Bucket back to the little shack where we paid for it and told the guy about how little we got. I also told him that the previous lady that was operating the shack told us that if we didn't get how much we were supposed to get from our mining rough, that we could either get a refund or another bag of the same value for free. The guy then told me to wait a minute and asked someone over the radio about it and proceeded to just give me a mother load bag (the $20 bag, not the $100 Bucket I paid for) and said that was all he could do for me. Instead of causing any commotion, I just took the bag from him and we left. I hope that this review reaches management their, because there was no since in me having to pay $100 for a Bucket when I could have spent $40 and got the amount of gems and rocks that I received in that overpriced Bucket. I have provided pictures of the Bucket and its contents. I hope I can get this resolved. Otherwise, I may never return to...

I took my 2 yr old granddaughter. I haven't been to this zoo since the early 80's when I was a child. I was expecting it to take an hour and a half tops to go through because I remember it being pretty small. It was a shock to see it's a totally different zoo! We were there for 4 hrs! There's a lot to list of what they have and the animals. They have a splash pad, a small park with a hill for kids to slide down, a choo choo train ride, a carousel 🎠, 2 cantinas (maybe 1 more) for burgers, nachos, pizza, fries, etc. We ate at the cantina that was in the Africa section where they had African type food YUM, I had the meat pie. They have several sections, Africa, South America, India. There's a Australian section you can walk into and there are 2 wallabys, an emu, and 2 big pigs, they all roam free in there. There's a sheep and goat petting section, which my granddaughter loves petting goats lol. There are tons of covered seating areas through out the zoo. Most of the zoo is nice and shady. The zoo staff was very nice and helpful because a few times I got a little turned around, I didn't want to miss seeing anything. They have 2 giraffes that you can feed, zebras, a Sumatran tiger, alligators, hyenas (which right now they aren't in their outside exhibit because a cub was just born), a huge anteater, a black panther, lots of animals that I can't remember the names of but are exotic and very fascinating. It's definitely worth checking out! I was very...