Zoo Miami- A Review

I had so much fun at Zoo Miami, I don't even know where to begin!

I picked up a brochure for Zoo Miami at a Visitor's Center in Key West.  I love zoo's, but my husband does not.  I knew it would take a little convincing to get him on board with my plan.  I have to give their marketing department props, the brochure is awesome.  It hit every key point that is relevant to my family.  Splash areas, animal rides, animal feedings, and my favorite of all, surrey bikes!!

First order of business was to purchase tickets.  My Florida Aquarium membership entitles me to 50% off admission to Zoo Miami, so my entire cost to get in was under $25.  Hooray!  (If you are a member of any parks, zoos, aquariums, etc. at home, make sure you check their reciprocity list to see if you get discounts at other awesome places)

I knew I wanted to rent a surrey bike as transportation, so that's where I headed.  The price was $21 for 2 hours and $11 per hour for each additional hour.  Boy am I so happy we did this!  This zoo is rather large, so walking would have taken a long time.  We were able to cut our meandering time in half by biking everywhere PLUS the kids loved it!  And as an extra bonus, Mommy and Daddy got lots of exercise.

We ended up purchasing a $10 summer savings pass for each of our kids that included unlimited rides on the monorail, giraffe feeding, parrot feeding, a carousel ride and a camel ride.  Our first stop was to feed the parrots.  This was a little strange considering there were no parrots, only parakeets and cockatiels.  It was a great time, none the less!  Both kids had a little cup of bird seeds which they held up to get the birds to land on them.  They seemed to have liked my husbands feet the best until they discovered that my shoes were tasty.  We spent quite a bit of time in there.

Back on the bike we explored Australia and Asia until we were dying of thirst (and the heat).  We stopped at Oasis Cafe for lunch to fuel up on Gatorade and chicken tenders.  Lunch was delicious and very reasonably priced.  The cafe was next to the sprayground and it was high noon.  Splash time!  The kids had a great time getting wet and cooling off.  The area was large and had tons of sprayers.  Enough to not feel crowded. 

And we're back on the bike and headed for the giraffe's.  My son was so excited to feed these beauties!  My daughter got one good feed in and then realized she was over it.

My next hunt was for the camel rides.  I wasn't sure how my kids would feel about this, but I was so happy that they both got on with me and we did our little figure 8 and posed for pictures.  Sweet!

We ended up spending about 6 hours at the zoo, about twice as much time as I intended, and we didn't even see it all.  I was extremely impressed with everything we experienced.  There were plenty of places with shade to take a break and even these mister stations set up every so often.  What a great idea!

I will definitely go back again!  Thanks Zoo Miami!