Discovering Florida: Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo (PART 1)

This afternoon the Orlando Theme Park News Team would like to (virtually) take you to Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo. As the name states, this is a quite large zoo that is located in Tampa, which is an area full of very interesting minor (and major) attractions. This particular attraction cannot be considered to be at the same level of Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park or Busch Gardens Tampa, but it can definitely be a place where families (especially locals) may want to spend a few hours together, checking out all of the zoo's exhibits and attractions.

There area animals from every corner of the earth: from cheetahs to elephants, from snakes to wallabies, from penguins to giraffes. If you are just looking for theme parks rides, though, you shouldn't get too excited. The park has a few small (and sometimes themed) flat rides here and there, but they are just an add-on to the experience. This is a an actual zoo, and it has exactly what people visiting such places expect to see: animals.

One thing that let us down was the lack of places to eat. It's true that this is one of the slowest seasons of the year (we visited less than a couple of weeks ago), but having quite a few of your restaurants closed (including the park's major restaurant, the wonderfully-themed Safari Lodge) was a little bit sad, especially since the only real restaurant open was at the front of the park, and the other "restaurant" sold not-that-great frozen food.

Enough talking. Here you are an extensive photo-gallery showing most of the areas (and animals) of the park:

The park's entrance looks very simple:

The park has a macaw fly-over like Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park:

Inside the park:

The only major restaurant that was open:

The central plaza is quite nice:

Going toward our first stop of the day - "Safari Africa":

The carousel:

A... ehm, ride:

Before getting to Safari Africa, we checked out the small penguin exhibit, which looked nice:





You can see the penguins really up-close, without having to stay inside an incredibly cold building. SeaWorld's Antarctica continues to become unimpressive day after day (despite the spectacular theming):













Theming!:







The entrance to the "Safari Africa" themed area:

You have to go through a tunnel to get there:





Ladies and Gentleman, here you are... the other side of the tunnel!:





Yes, it's the slow season alright:



Let's ride "Expedition Africa," the park's own safari ride:

CLICK HERE TO PROCEED TO PART 2 OF THIS LOWRY PARK ZOO PHOTO-GALLERY >