Chester Zoo Reviews

Love this zoo. My mum and I had a fantastic time wandering around, we even found a short boat ride which is free. I bought the tickets online and they were scanned at the gate for a quick and easy entry. Overall a great place to visit.

My kids loved it here, amazing day. Great range of food and the prices are not as high at we imagined! Defiantly recommend this for a family day out.

Absolutely shocking customer service. More likely to win the lottery than get through to the zoo over the phone, honestly. Paying so much money for the membership and being completely ignored. Doesn't matter what day of the week I call it always takes dozens of phonecalls to get through. Membership letters been sent to tge wrong address too. Waited WEEKS and WEEKS for the membership. SHOCKING

On a recent visit the animals were wonderful, as always, and staff were friendly. However I made a mistake and booked the wrong date. I spent a week trying to contact the zoo via their contact page and via telephone. Be warned that they don't answer emails and don't answer the phone. My boss was kind enough to extend my holiday or I would have wasted the £64 for 2 tickets. Also, the zoo has done a lot of work in lockdown rearranging things with paths closed off and a lot of exhausting detours and blind alleys. If you can get an up to date map with path closures marked, it's recommended.

Chester Zoo is amazing! There is so much to see and do here, every time we come back we find something new. Animal enclosures are well designed and the zoo keepers are very knowledgeable. The work Chester Zoo do for conservation and animal welfare is amazing. The food and shops at the zoo are great and there are plenty of toilets around too. Hot chocolates are particularly delicious! Staff are always friendly and helpful and we always look forward to our next visit.

We were quite worried after reading lots of negative comments on here but quite honestly what on earth are they talking about?? We had the best time with a 1 year old who saw more animals than we could count! Some didn't make an appearance but guess what? They are ANIMALS that's the point right?
As for expensive food(??) and queues (none) take a picnic!!! Busy yes but no problem getting around whatsoever and all the staff were fantastic too
All in all highly recommended we'll definitely be back ?

I know the Zoos have had enormous issues through the pandemic in particular the looking after animals ( that’s if you see any) but our recent visit on the 3rd August absolutely shocked me paying £126 pound plus £70 for extras and that not including food as we had taken food, but the whole experience was beyond shocking, you would not even think there was a pandemic still around … no social distancing and letting thousands of people to congregate …. However the zoo seems to get away with it by just having a tannoy telling you how to be careful, putting all the blame on visitors and to stop you congregating “take in the animals” , aquarium was rubbish, I could go down the local pet store and see better and a lot more, toilets were far a few between, the area where slush was being sold was broken and still selling slush “ watered down” at the same high price .. I know animals hide but we saw hardly any compared to other Zoos … go to your local park and you will see more and pay nothing … very disappointed and I’m off to stream the David Attenborough series … great place to get your face painted though and that’s the only animals face you will see … I know what the Zoo will come back with but they need to check out the Zoo in Wales now that’s well worth the money

Was looking forward to the trip to the zoo but very disappointed in the fact I only actually seen 4 animals in 4 hours. Don't waste your money on this

Only way at the moment to get tickets is to pre-book. DON’T!! No refunds!
Booked to travel to Chester on 1st July and booked tickets for Zoo. After update on cities/towns with increased cases of delta variant we decided safer to cancel trip from Scotland. Explained to zoo and asked about refund and told no! Asked if we could then have a voucher to reschedule and potentially book again later in year or better still extend into next year as not confident things will get any better over next few months - told to pick a day in August to move to!! If theatres and shows and hotels can cancel and refund or give extended opportunities to amend- why can’t Chester Zoo??
Anyone still looking to go on 2nd July - let me know - you can have tickets - don’t pay them again.
I know I won’t ever book with them again!!

Absolutely rubbish, all indoor viewing closed due to COVID. Nice sunny day, barely saw any animals at all, animals we did see were clearly depressed and quickly were out of view or went into indoor enclosures.
Saw lots of pigeons and seagulls ?
Ridiculously slow service for any refreshments (stood in 3 separate queues for 20 minutes but gave up each time as 2 or 3 staff ponder for 5 minutes to serve a drink or ice cream)
No water fountains to drink from or fill bottle up (could be auto sensor or foot peddle to comply with hygiene)
Found a snack bar with no queue for some chips, most disgusting chips of my life, cold, hard, some dark brown and super greasy.
Asked for a cup of tap water which they refused to give us.
No Maps provided, very few physical fixed maps so all day we were just guessing where to go most of the time.
Took us an hour to find the exit as there were no exit signs (until we reached the exit) we looped both sides of the park to find the exit as both times we missed the turning to the unsigned exit.
Heavy rain shower at the end of the day flooded most paths (upto 8 inch deep puddles, our ankles were submerged a couple of times)
Oh., and looks like the majority of the park has been untouched in 20-25 years.
On the plus side a couple of the members of staff were really enthusiastic and polite, the majority however looked like they really didn’t want to be at work.
Penguins were good.

Excellent customer service.
Case number 7051119
We had an issue with our tickets (our fault) and I can’t fault the customer service team. They sorted the issue out straight away and no questions asked.
Great service, can’t wait to visit.

A trip to the zoo a perfect gift, a belated christmas present. A littl expensive regarding the indoor attractions being closed due to covid.
My partner loves the sloths and it was a shame we did not get to see them!
Lion enclosure is much more spacious an open.
Always love a good day at the zoo.

A great day out and my daughter loved it. Although we found it extremely expensive as only half the zoo was open, we enjoyed it nonetheless. A few too many people but we took a mask with us and felt more comfortable. Our 3 year old was so grateful to be out at last.

I bought an animal adoption as a birthday gift last May. This cost £91.99 , which is expensive but I thought the recipient would be able to visit the zoo and enjoy spending time there. However due to the pandemic the zoo has been closed for a number of months and the recipient of the gift does not live close to Chester. They work full time , so it is going to be difficult to visit before the adoption expires. I contacted the zoo to ask for an extension to the adoption period but have heard nothing!! This is really poor customer service and I would expect better from a zoo with such a good reputation. Surely they could have replied to my enquiry rather than just ignore it. I expected better customer service.

Fantastic customer service from Chester zoo.
I booked tickets on line in advance but due to the covid issues the flights across for the people I was taking have been changed and the staff at the zoo helped us out.
Thank you ?