Metro Richmond Zoo

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 They play no music, and their signage designs are all outdated.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 born last month' in the same faded and outdated design.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 zoo treat cups.