2014-01 Shanghai Wild Animal Park

 Ray visited the Shanghai Wild Animal Park with one of his coworkers on Saturday.  It was a little rainy and cool, in the mid-40's.  The park is south of the hotel about 20 miles, in an area of Pudong that is seeing some growth and development.  A brand new subway line just opened up within the last month that has a stop about 2km from the park enterance.  The new Shanghai Disney park is going to be somewhere out in this general direction also.

There is both a walking area and a drive through area of the park.  The drive through area is limited to buses and tourist vans.  part of the admission fee is for a bus ride through the drive through area.  There is also an option for a drive through in an open air, caged bus that has feeding ports on the side to feed the animals.  We got there within an hour of the park opening, so they had many of the animals lined up along the walkway with their handlers for photos.  The handlers were all dressed in matching costumes to their animals.  Most had matching animal costumes, but the people next to the horses had uniforms on that reminded us of the red coats.

Most of the animals are in open areas with good visibility.  Usually they are separated by a small moat and wall, along with electrified wire fencing.  The red, or lesser pandas were in their own area near other animals like raccoons and flamingos.  Although there are many "Don't feed the animals signs", we saw many people feeding the animals any food they had with them, such as french fries and popcorn.

We were surprised that the kangaroo area just had about a 2' moat and and a 4' wall between the people and the kangaroos, as they could have easily jumped out of the area.  However, they have no reason to leave the enclosure area as they have plenty of food and water.

Although this is called a wild animal park, there are many circus like shows and activities.  Shortly after we got there, we attended a sea lion show, which included about 4 different sea lions doing a lot of balancing tricks and ball tossing and catching.  We also went to a show with tigers and bears doing tricks inside a round cage that could have been considered one ring of a three ring circus.  After those two shows, we decided we had seen enough of the circus performances.  Besides those acts, they had a large Ferris wheel and a ride area with a lot of kiddie rides.  Hardly anyone was there, as I think the cold weather keeps the crowds down during the winter months.

Due to the cold weather, many of the animals were in enclosed areas or not even available for viewing.  One of the orangutans was chilly and wrapping up in a burlap sack.  The other orangutan was very curious and followed us as we walked back and forth along the window of his enclosure.  The giraffes were off exhibit for the winter, so didn't get to see them, and they did not have an inside display for them

 The parrots were paired up and keeping each other company.  One of the areas I enjoyed was lemur island, where you walked through an enclosure filled with dozens of lemurs, but most of them were huddled together on an wall.


The park has a large panda area,with both an inside and outside are for the pandas.  When we walked through the outside area, we totally missed the pandas hanging out in one of the trees.  After we went through the inside area, which only had 1 panda on display, we came back to the outside area and realized the pandas were there all along.

We then took the bus tour through the drive through portion of the park, and noticed that a lot of the animals came up to the buses, waiting for food handouts.  Our bus did not have the ability to feed the animals, but since they came up to the bus, we got some good close up views.  As the bus moved from one area to the other, there was always a double gate system to keep the animals from easily moving from one area to another.

Although the weather was not the greatest, it was fun day in Shanghai to see the animals from Asia and other areas of the globe.