Helpful Mom

I love to travel, anywhere and everywhere, so I don’t need much excuse to take a daytrip with my girls.  We’ve been so busy with vacation bible schools that we haven’t made any trips in a while so this being their first week with no VBS we had a whole day free so we decided to drive off to Buffalo to visit their zoo.  We went there once last fall and had a good time and figured it was about time to go again.  From our house there it takes just over an hour to get there and they have nice zoo, we spent almost 4 hours there.  One of the reasons we chose to go there is with our Seneca Park Zoo membership we get a 50% off discount on the admission there making it a cheap day out. 

It’s a really nice zoo, not a really big zoo, but it does have a number of animals that we don’t have at the Rochester zoo like zebras, giraffes, and lions, among others.  The zoo is laid out in a circular pattern so you don’t have to travel back and forth to make sure you see all the animals.  And most of the animal habits are fairly small so you get a better chance of seeing the animals then in some larger more modern zoos where the animals have plenty of room to hide.

Some of our favorite things were the Wings & Things bird show, the carousel, feeding the Lorikeets, and the tropical rainforest building which is beautiful.  There are various animal encounters that they charge extra fees for, and a few tours that are free, along with the sea lion demonstration and bird show.  Katrina loved the bird show it was her favorite thing seeing the smallest owl(weighs the equivilent of 100 paperclips), miniature ducks and chickens.  Feeding the Lorikeets costs $1 per person who’s feeding the birds and is well worth the money if your kids are patient enough to wait for the birds to come out of hiding.  They limit the feedings to 3 times a day so that the birds will be hungry when it’s time.

I say to be appropriately prepared to visit this zoo you should bring along lots of $1 bills because your kids will want to ride the carousel, train, and feed the birds.  The carousel and train each cost $1 per kid per ride and you have to buy tokens from a machine which only takes either $1 or $5 bills and doesn’t give you change.  At the birds you can pay cash and get change from a person so that’s easier.  Of course all three of these things are seasonal, feeding the Lorikeets runs through Sept 6.  Also they do charge $3.25 to park your car in their parking lot but there is plenty of free parking in the surrounding area, in both my trips there I haven’t paid for parking yet.

Located just a few minutes from the thruway at: