Santa Barbara Zoo, Santa Barbara

Beautiful Zoo! Our hotel was 5min away so of course we had to make a visit. They had a lot of animals and quiet a few exhibits closed. We read it was a small zoo but it was white bit! Not LA Zoo big lol but lots of walking and sightseeing. Good prices and awesome play area for the kids to run around. We also loved the train ride! The conductors commentary was pleasant 😊

We love this zoo! We visit from Corona, CA, just about every year as we stay in Ventura at our family's timeshare. It's small enough not to be tiring and take all day, but has a great variety of animals and exhibits. You currently need to make reservations ahead of time, but it's super easy to do online and you can just show the codes on your phone- no need for a printer. We haven't had any issues buying tickets the last 2 times we've visited under these new terms. They've opened an Australian Walkabout encounter where you get to walk into an open animal exhibit with kangaroo, wallaby & emu. You can't touch them, obviously, but it's neat to be at their level walking around them. There's a kid play zone to let the kids burn off some energy while the adults relax a bit. Equipped with sandbox, egg features to play/climb on, musical instrument installations, sliding/sledding hill, and cargo net spider web. Something new they've added is a trading card feature inside the gorilla observation post. You go here to pick an animal to learn more about. Grab a sheet and pencil, find the animal on your sheet at the zoo & answer some questions about it. Once it's filled in, take it to the front gate and you get a trading card of that animal.