A must for animal lovers! (Woburn Safari Park)

Member Name: abi138

Product:	Woburn Safari Park
Date:	06/06/09 (91 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots to see, fun day out, lots of demonstrations and shows

Disadvantages: Lots of traffic and queuing when busy

--Where is it?--

Woburn Safari Park is in a village called Woburn which is just outside of Bedford. It is situated near Woburn Abbey and the deer park if you are also interested in visiting these.

--Pricing--

Prices vary depending on the season currently an adults ticket costs £17 and a child costs £12. Children under 3 go free and there is a discount for senior citizens.

I have an annual pass which cost £55 for one person for a year so if you intend on visiting more than a few times a year you can see that this is great value.

--What to do?--

The safari park is split into two areas: the drive through safari and the walk around area. After paying to enter you begin at the drive through safari.

In the drive through safari the animals are roaming free, sometimes you can get really good views of the animals other times they are further from the car. You are able to drive round as much as you like so if you don't get good views the first time go round again.

First, you can see the rhinos, look to your left as sometimes there is a rhino in a separate enclosure (I think this must be the male?) and lots of people miss this one. In this area are also the elands, the water buffalos, and sometimes the zebra as they are free to roam in this area too. You are allowed to have your window open in this area so there is the opportunity to get a lot of good pictures.

As you drive towards the tigers enclosure, you can see the elephants on your left. They are sometimes in their field so you will get a better view of them on the way out. The tiger enclosure contains 2 tigers. They are often quite far from the car but you can still get a good view.

Next is the enclosure with the bears and wolves. They are able to be in the same enclosure because they eat different foods. These animals are sometimes quite hard to see as they are often hiding in their shelters or in bushes so keep your eyes peeled. But when you do see them they are amazing.

The lion enclosure is next. There are a whole pride of lions, about 12 in total (I have never been able to count them!) They have a huge area and are often spread out sunbathing under trees. At the moment there seem to be 2 younger females who are always playing/fighting and the rangers in their trucks in this area start to panic when they go near each other! Whatever you do don't bang on the windows as this is what my uncle did and the lions started to stalk his car! Luckily the rangers warned them off. If you have a soft top car you can't go into any of the carnivore enclosures for obvious reasons.

Now you go back into the starting enclosure but further over, here you can see the zebras and the giraffes. You can choose to bypass the monkey jungle now if you wish and proceed to the walk through area. If you decide to go through the monkey area make sure you have taken off anything loose such as your aerials before coming into the park. The monkeys might sit on your car but I've never had anything pulled off mine yet.

Once you have driven through the monkeys you can go to the walk around area. Here there is lots of places to park and still loads more to see.

Walk round area

When you first entered the park you would have been given a map and a list of the demonstration and feed times. These include: penguin feeds, lemur feeds, wallaby feeds, squirrel monkey feeds, sealion displays, birds of prey demonstrations and more. The shows are definitely worth seeing but you won't have time to fit them all in so choose wisely!

There are many more animals that you can look around here including those listed above and also sheep, goats, red river hogs, marmosets and lynx.
There is a gift shop which is quite good if a little overpriced. There is a café and other stands where you can buy food and drinks. There is also an indoor playground with slides which my goddaughter loves. There's also an outdoor play park.

I just keep thinking of things to say! This review seems very long. There is also swan peddle boats and an indoor area where you can feed birds with nectar although there is a 70p charge for the food.

More recently Go Ape has been built, it is a high wire course. I haven't tried this so can't really comment on it. But it's there.

--Opinions--

There is so much to see here that although the entry might seem expensive it's definitely worth it for what you get included. There is something here for all of the family.

The only bad thing is that on busy days people have no consideration for others and stop anywhere in the road rather than pulling over. This causes huge queues and means everyone has to wait for them to stop.

Please keep your windows closed when you are driving through the lions, wolves, tigers and monkeys. There is nothing more annoying than silly people being a few feet from a lion and holding their camera out of their window (you think people wouldn't be so stupid, well they are) I've seen one person get out in the middle of the lion enclosure with their child, put their child in the car behind and then get back into their car. All of this with the lions about 10 feet away! It is so frustrating and I expect the rangers feel the same way.

As a season ticket holder it's obvious that I love Woburn Safari Park but I hope I have been able to give a fair objective review.

Summary: A brilliant day out - can easily last for a day