NJ Staycation with Kids: Day 2, The Bronx Zoo
Every couple of years we will buy a family plus membership to the Bronx Zoo. For our family of 5, if we go more than once a year it is worth it. It gives you access to all of the pay-extra parts of the zoo like the gorillas, the wild Asian monorail, and the carousel. You can include 3 adults and 4 children, so we tend to go with friends, and it gets you into 3 other city zoos as well. You also get to skip the entrance line, which was long during April vacation.
Since all of those people eventually got in, the zoo was a zoo, I tell you! I quickly texted my sister to let her know I might lose one of her children today. She suggested we buddy up like the Duggars, and that is exactly what we did. Whenever I felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people or I noticed someone wandering off, I told them to find their buddy. They loved it. We switched up buddies a couple of times to keep it exciting. We packed our own lunch and found a nice spot on the ground to eat.
I highly recommend bringing your own lunch; the food at the zoo is so-so, somewhat expensive and most importantly, everyone else and their mother want to eat lunch right around the same time. I promised the kids ice cream at the end of the day, but the line was so long that they agreed to wait til we got to our local place back home.
The Dinosaur Safari is back for the summer. This is one of those exhibits with life-sized, realistic looking dinosaurs planted in various locations throughout a forest-like setting. As members, we were able to walk through it free of charge. (This option is now only available on weekend mornings). Otherwise, the safari ride comes with the total experience ticket or you get a discount as a member. The walk was totally doable for all of our kids and there is a guide stationed at each dinosaur to answer any questions. At the end there is a dino dig, where the kids use paint brushes to sweep away sand revealing the “fossils” underneath. We have been to a couple of similar exhibits, so I’m not sure I would have paid extra for this experience; however, if you have a kid who is a dinosaur nut and you’ve never seen one of these, it is pretty cool, and I would definitely recommend it. Even our kids, who have seen similar things and are out of their dino phases or never entered one, seemed to really enjoy it, which kind of surprised me.
As for the rest of the zoo, it’s mammoth and hard to do all in one day. There is a bunch of walking, as the animals are rightfully spread out quite a bit; even the 10 year olds were complaining their legs hurt after a couple of hours. I knew we wouldn’t be able to tackle it all, so instead of setting off aimlessly, we looked at the map together and I had each kid pick an animal or exhibit they wanted to see. Then, I planned a route out that ensured we would hit up each of the spots they picked. This worked out really well.
Another great day in the books! Driving home from the Bronx at 3:30pm on a weekday is most definitely one of the layers of hell, but we did see a guy pop a wheelie on his motorcycle, so, silver lining.
Click here to see what we did on day 1 of our staycation.
Check out day 3 to see what we did when the rain came.
