Josh and I headed to Columbia, South Carolina to the Riverbanks Zoo. I never knew we had a really good zoo in South Carolina until I started this project, I was kinda shock learning this. In the beginning I didn’t have high expectations for the zoo I figured they had some farm animals roaming around inside the fence and that was it. I was very wrong about that idea. They actually have about 3000 animals and I didn’t see one sheep the whole time there. Here is our breakdown of the zoo:
Price: I thought the price point for the admission(11.75 for adults) was a bargain and I had no problem paying that for two to three hours of enjoyment. Even though we didn’t eat inside the zoo because we were going to enjoy some great burger later, the zoo menu had reasonable prices.
Crowds: We went on the Tuesday not expecting to see much of the crowd because kids were in school. But there were still a lot of kids running around because the zoo is a popular field trip spot. I imagine the weekends and summer would be very busy. Parents love taking their kids to the Riverbanks Zoo because it’s a good excuse for them to be a kid too.
Time: We arrived around 11am and left about 1:15pm, so we roughly stay about two hours. We could have revisited some sleeping animals to see if they we awake which would have extended our time. They have a garden section but being guys that didn’t interest us so we avoided that area. If you decided to do everything and do it right than making a whole day of it could be done.
Pros: I like the kangaroo area, where I could walk inside the fence area and be up close to the kangaroos. My favorite animals were the elephants, meerkats, penguins, grizzly bears, and the monkeys that were swinging around their area. You could feed the giraffes and birds. If you like birds and snakes this place is for you, they have plenty of both.
Con: The only real con was that most of the popular animals were sleeping when we visited in the morning. I kinda understand that certain animals are more active at night than they are in the day. It’s no fault of the zoo for this, it’s just nature. Josh and I miss the location of the maps at the entrance area, so we were working without a map so we got lost a few times. So make sure you grab a map at the beginning.
Below is a video of the trip highlights
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