With the current Government procedures in place, tickets are released four days ahead of your visit and these must be booked online via their website.

Prices:

Adult Entry – £19.78
Child Entry – £16.19
Family Entry – £68.35
Under 3 Entry – £0.00
Carer Entry – £0.00

Length of time spent here:

Approximately six hours.

My Review

I went with my husband Phil, daughter Amy and grandson Harry. After a long time of not having gone out except for walks, we felt it was time to go and visit an attraction nearby to us and so we decided on Marwell Zoo.

Phil and I had taken Harry here before, when he was a lot smaller, so now he was walking and talking and taking an interest in everything around him, I was looking forward to seeing how he reacted to the animals.

I was surprised by how much the car park was already filling up, so we joined the queue to get in, abiding by the two metre distance and as everyone had already obtained their tickets online, the queue was quite quick.

We obtained a map of the park and after a quick toilet stop, not the cafe as it was only open for takeaways, we made our way to the penguines.

 

Even though we told Harry they were penguins, he insisted they were ducks, so as he wasn’t too wrong, we let it go.

There was a one-way system round the park, which people seemed to follow on the whole and when there was an inside exhibit, there were always keepers to make sure that there was a certain number of people inside at any one time.

We headed to the giraffes, where Harry got very excited at seeing them and even said, “Giraffe,” the first time he has said that.  We went inside the giraffe shed, where we could get up close and personal and Harry was transfixed by them. So much so, that we bought him a toy giraffe at the gift shop and he kept hold of it all the time.

We followed the one way system around the zoo and saw some rhinos, zebras, a cheetah, leopard and a tiger. When Harry saw the tiger he shouted out, “Roar,” which was so cute.

We stopped for a picnic lunch and then decided to go to the Tropical House to see the frogs, birds, tortoises, mice and goliath beetles and the sloth, which all were excited to see.  There was a long queue for the Tropical House, which when you have a 19 month old boy it is difficult to keep him amused, but after bribes of chocolate buttons and juice, he was very well behaved and we were soon in there.

We did see the sloth, but he was hidden in the branches of a tree, so I have used the image from the Marwell Zoo website, as you can’t see him in our photographs!

Harry loved the fish swimming in the pools and he pointed at the birds, shouting “Birds,” as he did so.

We walked around the edge of the zoo, passing a snow leopard, emus and some hippos and we ended up at the gift shop where we just had to buy Harry a giraffe.

It was a lovely day, people kept their social distance, there were members of staff manning the toilets, the cafes were open for takeaways, all in all, it was very well organised.

As we left Marwell, Harry was asleep, tired out after doing a lot of walking and no doubt dreaming all about the animals and especially the giraffes!