Debbie Dolittle's Petting Zoo — Attraction in Parkland

First, I want to thank our gracious animal handler staff, Brian and a woman with glasses and brown hair - sorry I forgot your name! My husband surprised me with an otter experience, which is outside, and I literally screamed and jumped up and down in excitement - my dream come true! These are Asian small-clawed otters, two girls who are sisters, the owner got them when they were young, and they're around 1yo right now. Their enclosure had plenty of shade for these hot days we've been having. The woman staff member held my phone and took so many pics and videos for us, while we played with the otters, and they turned out great! Very knowledgeable in the species of otter, as well as the two girls' personalities. They made sure the otters and humans were safe every step of the way. Definitely worth the price and we had a good chunk of time with them. I included pics - I didn't focus much on the other animals, sorry!

I will say, all the pictures showing up of animals at the petting zoo, are not accurate. Unfortunately at the petting zoo, there are no zebras, llamas, alpacas, giraffes. A few animals available to pet, goats and sheep were available to feed inside a pen. I would definitely call ahead so you know what is there when you go. They also had other rare animals behind glass. Another section had iguanas, snakes, frogs, guinea pigs and ferrets in a separate area. Outside were two other animals related to racoons, I can't remember the name of them. I will admit I felt sad for the animals and hope they have adequate time outdoors. The location is very odd - in a strip mall with other businesses. It would have made me feel better if the animals were on a farm with more open spaces. They did look to be in good health, that being said, I'm no vet either. Good place to go for younger kids to learn about animals, along with an arcade where about 3-4 were out of service, sadly.

For the owner - please work on making animal experiences easier to book. My husband had been trying to reserve the otter experience for our family back in May for a July 20 reservation - that's our 5th wedding anniversary date. He wasn't able to reach anyone by phone or email with concerns. He then had to drive 30min+ from where we lived to talk to someone in person, because he was told you're only open on the weekends. This is the only reason for...

So I brought my 7 year old son with me to this place, it was fun for him, to an older eye, disappointing. First were the ghastly prices; given how small the petting zoo is, $60 for two adults and a small child is kind of steep given its close to zoo prices which offer way more space and way more animals for viewing. They did have small feed buckets as well, which were $8 a piece which is also pretty steep for some lettuce and 4 carrots. In the bigger room they had chickens, capybara and two porcupine running around, the animals were sweet tempered. They had stalls closed off that housed some tortoise, kangaroos, a donkey and a couple of others I can't recall. None of the kangaroo were up or active while we were there in either the front or back room. There was a backroom we went to that had a black haired lump that we couldn't identify the animal as it was curled up sleeping and the workers didnt know what it was either...? Of course my son was very giddy about the housing with a dozen or so guinea pigs, the lettuce definitely didnt stretch long when we got there. There was also a cute prairie dog and a whole bunch of sheep and goats that the carrots were for and there was a backroom with snakes, some fish and other reptiles but not a whole lot. One of the things that really bothered me was they had what looked to be a serval wild cat. Firstly it was incredibly aggressive like it had recently been caught and stuck in that small pen, it tried to attack the glass when viewers moved towards it. What made me mad was it had an intense hate for one of the workers (made me wonder what she did) and she'd come up to the glass and taunt the cat to get an extremely aggressive reaction of it slamming its paws on the partition and hissing at her. Given the small, dirty enclosure I felt it was incredibly cruel that they housed the animals in such small spacing and also felt the need to antagonize the animals for customer viewing. It was actually disgusting behavior. I'm glad my son had a good time, however due to the negative outweighing the positive with how the animals were treated and the abysmal pricing, we definitely won't...

The kids always have fun but sadly there were less variety if animals than the last time we went 2 years ago. No sea otters, no monkeys and overall felt there was less to keep the kids entertained long. Enjoyed the kangaroo jumping around, the rabbit Agnes, feeding the llama Chester and we stared at the parrot for a long time watching its movements. It would be a good idea to put the names of the animals on their area and also what the animals are as some we could not identify. The names we did get were from interacting with staff. It was noticable the staff was also decreased as on previous visits there were staff in the area telling us about most of the animals and personality traits. Although there was a lady who did provide some information while we were walking around she was also managing the new visitors coming in so was not able to interact or provide much info. I will also note the section that used to have sea otters now has one single kitty... the kitty was packing back n forth in an enclosed room with a window and appeared to be unaffected by us looking in at it and honestly I felt like that kitty needed snuggles or at the very least a partner inside. This did change the tone for our group as it was obviously the cat was effected by being in this enclosure and the fact that it was unbothered and looking past the kids looking at it in the glass made me feel like they had been in there for a long period of time. The kids always have fun interacting with the animals that they would otherwise not get to interact with but with 5 adults in the group it was a little bit more somber and even the kids got bored quicker than onnprevolious visits. I tried to squeeze as much time out of it was we could since it was $78 for 3 kids, 2 adults (ended up being $13 per person) with a regular cup ($5) and a small bucket ($8) of treats for the animals. Not 100% sure we would be returning without knowing in advance what animals they have for...