Metro Richmond Zoo — Attraction in Midlothian

I've thought a lot about how I should word my feelings about this zoo and my experience. I'm somewhere between a 2 and 3-star rating. I love how fun zoos can be, so we continued our tradition of visiting a zoo each vacation we go on. This year we chose the Richmond Zoo, and it was not a show-stopper. We arrived around 1pm on a Tuesday, and there was plenty of parking. We stayed until about 4pm. There was no signage about the zoo from the highway, but you see it after you make the turn in. They might benefit from that free highway advertising if possible, and it helps with navigation. We purchased our tickets for $24 per adult. They offered us a 'zoo treat cup' to feed the animals, and it looked like kibble. I didn't like that you could feed almost any animal the same kibble. Shouldn't their diets be more customized?

When you walk in, the whole place just doesn't have any color or pizzazz. They play no music, and their signage designs are all outdated. Don't misunderstand that, their signage will say 'new zoo baby! born last month' in the same faded and outdated design. It is an odd choice.

Here are the good things. Their animals look healthy and they seem to provide a lot of enrichment. It was mid-October, and they were probably the most active animals in a zoo I've experienced. The place is real quiet and peaceful, smells real woodsy, and is rather clean all around. My husband commented that the lunch and snacks they sell at the cafe are probably the most reasonable prices he's ever seen, meaning they don't appear to have increased in a while.

The zoo's kibble food comes in a paper cup, as their website states their hatred toward the damage plastic has on animals. They also have PVC pipes next to trash cans that are designed to collect the paper cups and keep them out of the waste bins, however, their design needs updating to help further reinforce the use of the PVC collections. If they were clear, and one cup was always inside, that's enough of a visual cue to the visitors on how it works. A picture of this is included. Walking around the zoo is very serene and the woods area they have is rather beautiful. They are also making strides toward expanding their zoo to new areas to house more animal exhibits.

As you walk around the zoo, their concrete paths need fixing. There are quite a bit of uneven walkways, with clear potholes in the paths. I saw maybe one orange cone indicating danger. The day we visited, their penguin-drop ride was broken, as was their sky ride. I love sky rides, so that was disappointing that it broke just the day before we arrived (I asked the staff: when did it break?).

They appear to have put a lot of trust on the visitors, as many of the animals have wired fencing to their cages instead of glass, so anything could be thrown inside, fed to the animal, or the animal could be pet. They had workers around doing their jobs, but really no one supervising to prevent abuse or danger.

The saddest part of the visit was their poor farm animals. I am not an animal expert, and you can view my posted photos, but the goats appear to be grossly overweight, and I assume that's due to the unregulated 'zoo treat cups' and visitors just feeding them all the time. If I am wrong, I will gladly update my review.

Overall, I unfortunately would not recommend a visit. I even Googled 'zoo red flags' and this zoo didn't really exhibit any of them, except for the pacing lions, but I didn't enjoy myself too much and wasn't impressed. They would highly benefit from a better marketing team to update their signage and stop selling the...

Great park on a beautiful day!

Born and raised in nearby Washington DC, I grew up running about the Smithsonian National Zoological Park, vast as it is. But on my visit to Richmond this week I wanted to make sure I visited the Metro Richmond Zoo. And I was not disappointed with the visit!

This was my first visit to the Zoo park as I took my 18 month old daughter. The sun was shining and since it was a Monday, the park was not crowded at all! The animals look happy and very well taken care of! And many were mamas! Even the guests were friendly, as were the staff!

The staff were welcoming and knowledgeable but Genevieve the ostrich stood out on our visit as she walked sweetly along with us on our train ride. There is a bit of a distant walk around to get to the train as I was informed they had moved it due to zoo expansions! The walk, however, was a nice one. Hilly, shaded by nature trees, but nice. Get those steps in!!

I was shocked to see the White Rhino there at the park, knowing that they are near extinction in the wild. I was glad to see them taken care of at this park. After, the very social giraffes came for some friendly interactions as I have never seen one so close up. BEAUTIFUL!

Stopping at the penguin Cafe, we got a hotdog and fries and the food was served fresh and hot. I missed out on seeing the hippos as my daughter was conked out and tired by the time we got around to that section of the park and I didn’t want the hassle of taking her from the stroller but we will visit Poppy and her friends on our next visit!!

On the way out, we stopped in the well stocked gift shop where there were things like shirts and hats, candy and goodies and stuffies. I wanted to get a Poppy plushy, which were adorable! But the price tag was a little steep for my pockets that day. Next time maybe!

All in all, I would love to go back soon. It was a great visit. Side note, make sure to visit the Tortoise Habitat. They are HUGE and HAPPY!

Be kind and show love to this place that seems to be doing a great job in conservatory efforts! We will be...

This is one of the best zoos to be able to get up close with animals. Unless you like carnivores.

The lions are so fair away from the viewing area they look like dogs. The cheetahs are covered with bushes and are like ants in the grass. The tigers and bears have 1 small glass viewing area that gets so crowded it's never possible to enjoy them.

That being said. The giraffes are awesome if you get a chance to feed them. However, it's normally slim picking due to the crowds, hill, and area of feeding possible.

The snakes, spiders, and sloths are in a dark, crowded hot tunnel where you barely see anything because the glasses are so fogged or scratched.

The train is expensive and such a long wait for a short and lack luster experience.

As a note also - Not very handicapped accessible, as we had a friend in a wheel chair with us and she couldn't see hardly any of the exhibits without standing up, or couldn't fit due to narrow walk ways, uneven terrain and overly crowded viewing areas.

The bathrooms are few and far between and half broken.

You do get up and close with primates, birds, antelope, and farm animals.

To end the review for a family of 5 with a military discount and 3 children, we paid almost 100$,

plus, if you want to enjoy any of the hands-on exhibits, you need the animal feed cups because they won't even come near you without it.

**We visited on a Saturday and they had a school visiting with 27 busses FULL of children who only had 1 adult per 5-10 kids. The zoo was not prepared at all and was obviously overwhelmed by it, if this is a repeated event I would suggest planning better and maybe even doing it on a less crowded day or closing for the day so that the children could enjoy...