The Toronto Zoo

The Toronto Zoo

Situated on 710 acres of land, the zoo is the third larges in the world. It has more than 10 kilometers on trails through displays of more than 5000 animals separated by geographic regions. The walking trails are opened for cross-country skiing in the winter. The newly opened Savanna Exhibit features a 32 acre East African hiking experience.

Toronto Zoo - In Desperate Need of a Facelift

I just visited the Toronto Zoo on the weekend with my wife and six year old daughter. We had previously been to Wonderland the day before and had a fantastic day in the summer sun and heat with all the fun and exciting roller coaster rides, kids rides, the water park and lazy river. We had such a fantastic time we were sure to have the same fun time we had had a day earlier at Wonderland, but boy oh boy was I wrong.


When we arrived at the Toronto Zoo, we decided to get a stroller for my daughter as we were told that there was quite a bit of walking to see all the animals at the zoo. When we started walking the zoo site, we quickly noticed just how much walking we had to do just to see one section of the animals. Before the journey began I read about the exciting new coral reef exhibit and decided I had to see it first before anything else so we headed there. The much hyped was really just a large aquarium in a wall inside a room with some tropical fish in the tank. The corral reef or aquarium was beautiful with all the colors and colourful fish swimming around. All in all though I really did not find it lived up to the hype the colorful brochure suggested it was. When we finished there, we started walking to the next exhibit, and again we could not believe just how much walking we had to do to see any animals at all, so we decided to take the Zoomobile which was located at the front gate and paid to take the easy way to see all the animals.

The zoomobile was not very impressive as you still could not really see many animals at all during the course of the trip. At this point we were really disappointed with the overall amount of distance that you needed to go to see any of the zoo animals. Our observations were that after being to Granby Zoo in Quebec, Wonderland and other parks and zoos, the Toronto Zoo which is run by the city of Toronto fell extremely short on fun and excitement with no rides for kids, no water park other than a small area with sprinklers and water fountains and literally miles and miles of walking to see anything of any real value. The zoo reminded me of a building or restaurant in dire need of a facelift. We were so disappointed with the experience that we left without even seeing what the zoo had to offer. My next trip to Toronto with my family will be two days at Wonderland instead of visiting the Toronto Zoo.

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