The Wild Animal Park — Attraction in Town of Sullivan

Overall, we absolutely love visiting this place! This was our fourth time/4th year coming and it has become a fun family tradition each summer that we look forward to. However, they were a few things I noticed this year that I would like to mention here in hopes that the owner may take them to heart and make changes in the future.

The first thing I noticed this year that previously was not an issue, was the absolute lack of care in the restrooms. The main restrooms in the gift shop were atrocious as was a port-a-potty used in the park. (I can’t speak to all of them as I only had to use the one closest to the front of the park). I understand there may be a low staffing issue, but in my humble opinion, other than a care of the animals, one of the most important things is to have clean restrooms for your visitors. Especially those of us traveling from out of town with small kids.

Next, since you are not allowed to bring food into the park, the only option for lunch there is the small concession stand by the pond. We bought lunch here and lunch was inedible. The cheeseburgers were hard as rocks and I have never had a french fry I didn’t like…except for these. They were so hard I couldn’t even chew them and I am seriously wondering if they were from the day before as they also tasted very stale. For the money spent to buy lunch here, this is unacceptable. we had to toss most of the food we purchased.

This was also the first year I noticed how lacking shaded seating was (perhaps because it was my 1st year going with a newborn I was trying to shield from the blazing sun!). I would suggest putting canopies over some of the benches throughout the park. The pavilions are great, but only on one designated spot.

Finally, we noticed that the black bear enclosure seemed to have added two more bears to it, now making four black bears in a very small space. I have never considered this to be a place that doesn’t treat its animals well – I believe in general, it really does, but this made me question that for the first time. On top of that, the black panthers were also moved, and their old enclosure seemed a much more worthy place for them, given that they had a catwalk there and no longer do.

I am wondering if the management of the acreage in the park is doing a poor job of allocating where all of the animals will go and thus, taking space from animals that really should have more than what they did this past visit.

I do hope the owner takes these comments seriously but I do want to make clear that this place is awesome overall, and much better than your average zoo. I will continue to support them in the future, while hoping for positive changes in the areas...

The giraffe exhibit and the canary exhibit were incredible, I loved feeding the giraffes and hanging out with a bunch of birds flying around and landing on me. lol That's the kind of exhibits I love a lot, ones that are interactive, for sure. Same with feeding the goats and other animals that I could feed there. The pygmy goats were so cute! :)

I loved a lot of the animals there, and one of my favorite animals were there; the binturong. :)

I do think this is a park people should check out, especially with little kids; there's a lot for kids (especially little ones) to do there, for sure. So yeah, do check this out for yourself, so you can make the decision whether you'd like to go back or not, because in the end, you're valid for liking this park... Here's why my review is 3 stars though. I just. I.. genuinely didn't like how some of the enclosures were so small, to be honest. Some of the animals looked incredibly depressed, which made my heart ached so much. So I hope, maybe there can be more enriching things in the exhibits for them. Them being happy is the biggest thing that would draw me more to this zoo, and I.. kind of didn't feel like there was much for them there. And I.. saw a lot of the monkeys and big cats pacing back and forth, unfortunately.

Admittedly, though, this ... review might be biased(?) because the weather wasn't the greatest today, so a lot of the animals might've been inside, and that's valid. That and they might not have had as many open exhibits. Eventually, I'll go back sometime to see how it's doing. But yeah, just, a mixed...

This place is a crappy roadside “zoo”.

Lack of basic enrichment for the animals. They are extremely bored, many of which constantly are pacing. This is my #1 biggest problem with this place.

Mysterious disappearances of animals. For instance they had 4 Macaws last year and they all vanished without a trace. This is not the first time I noticed this.

Most enclosures are way too small. An example is their main entrance building; those monkeys need significantly more space. There is one enclosure that’s literally smaller than my closet that houses 2 monkeys.

Their “hold a baby sloth or kangaroo” thing is just simply unethical. I don’t even need to explain how wrong that is. Nothing like taking a baby from its mother to have random humans hold it for profit. Speaking of sloths, those have straight up disappeared too.

Their staff is literally just bored college kids.

Their owl enclosure is really sad, I know y’all can do better than that.

The electric deterrent around the hyenas seems unnecessary and is making a loud buzzing noise. The hyenas use to come out and play and now they seem too scared to leave their shelter. There could be a reason for this, but please do something about the noise. Hyenas have elevated hearing and they seem very bothered.

-I have seen baby goats literally get born in the dirt in the hot sun, and no one cared at all.

-they never turn any water features on for the bears. Water always looks disgusting.

-the owner is a total weirdo who just wants $$$

It’s just another tiger king with a...