Red Panda Pilgrimage Day 2

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Well, I completely underestimated the massiveness of the Bronx Zoo. I had always heard it was the best NYC zoo, but wow. We arrived sometime after lunch and stayed until closing and still did not even get to half of the park. Of course, I immediately booked it to the red pandas when we entered. They have a really neat set up so that you can see red pandas two different ways.

The first is at the Wild Asia Monorail. This attraction gives a scenic look of the southwest area of the park and provides visitors with views of lots of Asian deer species, a tiger, rhino, elephant, horses, babirusa, peacocks/hens, and ends with a view of the red pandas. This was a very cool way to see exhibits in a beautiful part of the park and is totally worth the 5 extra dollars to get a ticket. The one major drawback for me was that I felt like we zoomed past the red pandas and I wasn't able to really get a very good look (or picture for that matter). In some spots of the ride, the driver would slow down or even stop, but the red pandas was not one of them. I would imagine that this depends on the driver and how they are doing on time since it is one of the last exhibits before exiting the monorail.

The second is by heading to the Himalayan Highlands where if you're lucky you can see another red panda. Unfortunately, I was not so lucky. The red panda was nowhere to be seen and it was raining lightly at this point in the day so I'm sure that had plenty to do with it not being out.

Like I said, I totally underestimated the size of this place and I definitely need to plan a return trip to see all the things we didn't get to and hopefully catch a glimpse of the red pandas I wasn't able to see today. The family favorites of the day had to be the polar bear and the bug carousel, though. The polar bear was having a grand old time with an enrichment activity when we got to that exhibit. My son did not want to leave. The bug carousel is everything that it sounds like, and by that I clearly mean that it was AMAZING. I'm looking at the paper map they gave us at the gate and I am just so bummed that I can say we saw so little of it.

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