Updated review, 4 years later
4
4
Date of visit: October 2026
I have experience of challenges around: moving around
I use or have experience of: walking aid, wheelchair
Overall Rating
Good
We’ve been to this zoo a few times now. It definitely has its good and bad points. Overall a good afternoon out, but their accessibility needs quite a bit of work.
Disabled Access In and Around
Good
The majority of the zoo is wheelchair accessible. There are some uneven paths, but I managed to wheel over them without too much difficulty. The path near the cheetahs is gravel, but is still manageable. There are some very steep slopes, but these are mostly marked on the map. I only managed them with the help of my partner. I would recommend manual wheelchair users bring someone to help and/or use power assist. I have a Smoov, but it could not cope with the steeper sections. The doors into the entrance/gift shop are quite heavy and I needed assistance to open them. There’s also some fake grass around the entrance which was slightly tricky to wheel over.
Accessible facilities: Single-level venue, Step-free entrance
Parking & Transport
Poor
I travelled to this place by personal vehicle
I know this zoo used to have disabled parking, but it currently does not. They built over the previous disabled bays and oddly have not repainted them or made any attempt to make the other parking accessible. In fact their “festive” tunnel entrance makes the car park considerably less accessible since it blocks off the gap around the parking bays! Thankfully we went on a weekday when it was quiet, but when it’s busy unless you can get parked in the first row I’m unsure how you would fit a wheelchair through the cars to get to the door. There’s no hashed areas for extra room for getting in/out of cars either. To make things weirder, their newest map (2025) quite clearly shows disabled parking. This just refers to the regular car park, so it’s a little confusing. There are no accessible parking bays at the main entrance.
Accessible Toilets
Bad
Supposedly there are disabled toilets… somewhere? They are not marked on the map and I could not find them! Thankfully I am ambulatory and could walk enough to use the normal toilets (which do not have enough space for a wheelchair). I think the “baby changing” marked on the map is possibly also the disabled toilets, but why not say that if it’s the case? It’s a bit puzzling. I didn’t really go hunting since I could use the other toilets, but it’s definitely an issue. I’m not sure why they didn’t realise this when the new map was designed. None of the signs for the toilets indicated where the disabled toilet was either.
Staff
Poor
Unfortunately the staff do not come across as helpful or welcoming. Which is probably why I didn’t bother trying to ask them about the parking or toilets. They charged my partner and me the full adult price to get in. That bizarrely makes this zoo much more expensive to us than Edinburgh Zoo! We weren’t offered any sort of discount or concession rate, despite me clearly being a wheelchair user.
Additional Information
The zoo does seem to have made a lot of good changes recently - quite a few of the animals have new, bigger enclosures, they’ve taken down the tired old Christmas decorations (finally!) and have freshened up the whole place. The new map is thankfully a lot more accurate and easier to read than the previous one (with the exception of the mysterious disabled parking and missing toilets). If you can visit on a quiet day and can look past the price and the staff’s attitudes, the animals are worth seeing. I particularly enjoy the prairie dogs, penguins, lynx, bears and wolves.
