I've done a lot of hiking nearby in South Mountain on the weekends, so I probably had a few negative preconceptions about this place going in - the traffic is always nuts in this area (it's very popular and I don't think I know a single person with kids who hasn't been here at least once) and this is on the smaller side so I assumed there wouldn't be a ton of high quality animals to take a gander at. I wasn't necessarily WRONG about those things, but this was actually a pleasant surprise in a lot of ways.

I came here this past Saturday midday with some top-tier chums and a Meatball Honorary Young Pup. If you're anti young pups and/or strollers, boy is this not the place for you. I saw a few young adult couples but the vast, vast majority were parents with kids. It was a madhouse by the time we met up but they had a very good system of cops directing traffic into the various parking garages - it only took a few minutes to get from the main road into a parking spot, despite having to go all the way up to the top level (I'd definitely recommend going earlier in the day if you have a choice). I might have been the beneficiary of luck/timing but I also didn't have any issues getting out and having to wait for obligatory SUVs to back out of their spots, etc.

This is a very clean, well-maintained zoo. This was one of the first legit nice Saturdays of the year so there was tons of people, and yet it somehow didn't feel too crowded/claustrophobic - the pathways are wide and spacious despite not having as much acreage to play around with and there are also a lot of areas for people to go off-path to eat snacks or just take a break from scoping out the animals.

My favorite animal of all time is the mongoose (it will cuddle with you but also kill cobras if needed), but unfortunately they didn't have one here. As a Plan B, I petitioned aggressively for a visit to Big Cat Country. There were a couple of maps along the way to guide us - it was of course on the complete opposite side from the entrance - but in my opinion were few and far between. They definitely could have used a few more. As I said at the time, there shouldn't be more "You are Here" maps at the decrepit Willowbrook Mall than here. I liked Big Cat Country, but it could have been better. They made the decision to take some of the heavy hitter cats like the lions and cheetahs and put them in the Africa section, which I get in theory, but if you have a literal section you've created for big cats dot dot dot. As a result, we literally only found two cat exhibits once we got over there, though one of them was the cougars that were RIGHT up against the glass. The Meatball Honorary Young Pup was enamored, though efforts to pet these fine creatures were negated by said glass.

My least favorite area was the Shores of Africa exhibit, which featured mostly penguins. Definitely not anti penguin, but it was very smelly in there (like a sushi restaurant that's going to get shut down by the health department in the next hour) and might have been the only area where it just felt like too many people were jammed in there. That might be an exhibit worth enlisting a little crowd control for in the future.

Your mileage may vary on this, but I found the constant barrage of Essex County political shoutouts grating by the end. Boy, do they want to make it clear which local politicos played a part in getting this zoo up and running, to the point where the Africa section is literally called the Essex County African Adventure. Come on. It's a little much. There shouldn't be more pictures of Essex County executive Joe DiVincenzo than the giraffes.

Definitely a cool experience worth doing at least once. I'd prefer to go when it's a little less crowded, and they obviously need a mongoose to spruce up the Asia section, but it's a nice alternative to dealing with the city chaos of a Bronx Zoo.