One day tickets for two of us would have been around $125 total, so we opted to get the Keepers Club membership which is more like being a donor rather than the normal annual passholder. This gets you unlimited entry to both parks, access to early morning Saturdays each month at each park, free bus and skyway access, 2 free guest passes, 10% discount on food and merchandise and a special donor entrance. The total for this was around $225. If you're going to go to the zoo at least 2 times in one year, it pays for itself.
The San Diego Zoo is absolutely beautiful. You can easily notice the older parts of the park and the new or newly remodeled sections. The zoo has been around since about 1912. The park is lush and feels like you're in a jungle for most of the older sections of the park. Some of the newer sections feel more sparse and have little shade, but should be better after a few more years. The park is really large and full of beautiful winding treks through various exhibits. Many of the areas of the parks feel so intimate. You'll definitely need a park map to make sure you don't miss anything.
Be prepared to walk 5 miles or more easily on your average visit, that is full of drastic up and down slopes throughout most of the park. My 53 year old legs which have had both hips replaced, made it difficult at times. It took us quite a while to make the long trek back to the top, with multiple stops to rest. We weren't the only people having this issue. We did see an elevator after the fact, that might have helped with a portion of the way up. I think future visits will be done in smaller portions, visiting a few sections at a time, limiting our walking time.
To be perfectly honest, we just over did it. Especially since it was a hot day in Southern California.
One issue that's pretty glaring for me, is that half of the exhibits are or felt empty, or the animal could not be seen. We spent half of our time searching the exhibit for a paw or a mound of fur. Often, that's all you would see. Popular exhibits for giraffe's, elephants and rhino's were of course, full of animals and easily seen. We looked forward to seeing Otters and Polar Bears, but they were nowhere to be seen. You will easily see the differences between old and new cages/exhibits in the park. The old cages, are difficult to see anything. Towards the end of our day, we found ourselves walking past them and not taking the time to try and see what was in there.
I typically have a lot of empathy issues at zoo's. Do the animals seem happy? Are their cages/exhibits good for them, allowing freedom of movement and giving them the feel of being in the wild? I had some minimal empathy issues at the park. There were a few, that I wish were better for the animal, but I think that you'll see that at most any zoo around the country. None of them are perfect, but most seem to all be getting better over time.
Overall, we really loved the San Diego Zoo. You can easily see why it's considered to be one of the best in the country. We will enjoy going back multiple times, experiencing early morning hours, special occasions/exhibits and checking out the Safari Park. I hear they have a zip line, so I'm really excited to experience that.
I wasn't in a picture taking mood like I normally am, but did manage to take a few pics.
