Timbavati Wildlife Park Review

Amongst the touristy town of Wisconsin Dells is this hidden gem of a wildlife park. Being in Wisconsin Dells, it is overpriced. However, this was a fun stop. We spent about 2 hours on a sunny fall day strolling the grounds. We also took a nice train ride around the grounds. Although it isn’t a large zoo, they do a good job of segmenting parts of the zoo away from each other to give it a larger feel. Although parts of it give off major “private-zoo” vibes, the park does a good job of following regulations, and treating their animals well. Check out our highlights and lowlights in our Timbavati Wildlife Park review.

Highlights:

This wallaby joey was an unexpected perk of visiting this zoo

African Savanna / Train Ride – The train ride takes you on a 15-minute-ish ride around the African animal habitats. During our visit, it was too cold for the giraffes to come out, so they let us get off the train and walk into the giraffe barn to see/feed the giraffes. Later, the weather warmed up, so when we did the walking trail to the African exhibits, we got to see them up close. Rhinos and several types of gazelle/antelope are also in the African habitats.
Small Animal Buildings – Timbavati has several buildings that you can check out. In one of them was an exhibit of climbing structures with five sloths! Five! That’s by far the most sloths we’ve ever seen in an exhibit together. The nursery building also has several baby animals, which was a lot of fun.
Parakeet Building – There’s a small parakeet building in the small animals/interactive part of the zoo. This was one of the more spacious parakeet buildings we’ve been in, and the birds were all very active.
Kangaroo walkabout – It wasn’t open on the day of our visit, but I love when zoos include an opportunity to walk in with the kangaroos!

This lemur exhibit gives them access to crawl above your head!

Petting Zoo – This petting zoo area was one of the better ones we’ve seen. There was plenty of room for the animals, and also plenty of room for visitors (young and old) to spread out and feed the animals. We spent most of our time by the goats. The feed bucket you purchase lets you feed several other animals as well.

Lows:

Price – My biggest gripe with Timbavati is the price. But again, it’s in the middle of a tourist trap, so they can charge high prices and still bring in crowds. For our family of five, with admission and train, and 2 feed buckets, it cost us $144 to visit. That’s just too much.
Interactive Opportunities – Small zoos (typically) thrive on interactive opportunities. There weren’t many at this zoo. I would recommend some more aviary and petting zoo type exhibits to ensure that younger visitors enjoy their visit.

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