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 mentioned above.