West Midlands Safari Park Review

For Christmas this year our family bought us tickets to West Midlands Safari Park. It's not somewhere we've ever been before, though both of us have fond memories of doing safari parks as children, and we were excited to try it out with our 4 kids!

I was anxious at first that we would find ourselves pressured to buy tickets to the theme park for lack of activities once paying for entrance, but I needn't have worried! There is so much to do at this place! There are various animal enclosures, talks and shows from animal keepers, the safari itself, a walk through bat cave, ice age exhibition, dinosaur exhibition as well as loads of walks, play areas and sensory activities to do! We spent the entire day there and found that we could have spent longer!

The entire place is pram friendly - in fact I don't think I saw an entire step the whole way round - though that does mean that the walking gets rather hilly at times! My thighs are bigger today because of it! There are also plenty of maps detailing hidden exhibitions or things to look at and I liked how simply everything was laid out for us to find. 

There are lot of 'extras' that you can partake in as a family if you so wish. The obvious extra is the theme park which actually looked really good! I think next time we would get tickets to that too as our kids were all of a height where they could go on the majority of rides. There are food and gift shops dotted around the park, places to play little fair type games, face painting, balloon making and river rides too! So much for you to do on top of the standard entrance, but we also found that our trip wasn't lacking because we didn't buy extras. 

The actual safari was really good! I'd recommend doing the drive round safari towards the end of your day because it gets VERY busy. We sat in the car for around 2 hours driving around enclosures, and there were moments when we hadn't moved for 30 minutes. There's plenty to see though and you can buy animal feed for only a couple of pounds and feed some of the animals in their enclosures. It's heavy on your car - lots of hill starts and crawling along in first gear - so be advised! An automatic car is probably for the best or someone who knows how to hold the gears well! They had a variety of animals there though, including some more exotic ones like giraffes and lions, and we were well entertained the whole way round.

Some basics you need to know? Parking is free, there are bins on sight and you can take a picnic! We found that our older three (7,5,4) all enjoyed the day and made the most of it, but our baby (1) wasn't that much bothered. I would suggest that this is probably the ideal place for children aged 3 and above as there's a lot of walking and a LOT of sitting in a car (though children don't need to be strapped in for that so you can manage it a little), but children under that age may struggle. 

All in all though we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and absolutely would go again! 

KEY INFO:

- Pram and disabled friendly

- Free parking

- Can take a picnic

- Free toilets and baby change on site

MUST DO:

- Feeding the giraffes on the safari drive

- Walk through bat cave

- Lorikeet landing (buy a pot of food for £1.60 to get them to land on you!)

- Sea lion show