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1300 Fulton Street W- Grand Rapids, MI 49504
- (616) 336-4300
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1300 Fulton Street WWe used to go to a lot of zoos when the kids were little.
Zoos were our summer vacation destination. We took trips to Milwaukee, Chicago, Fort Wayne, Toledo, Detroit, South Bend, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Michigan City, Naubinway, Alto, Lansing, Columbus, and Cincinnati just to go to zoos. We were also members at Binder Park Zoo in Battle Creek and would go there a few times every summer.
Then, the kids grew up.
Figure skating dominates our lives right now. The sport is insanely expensive so vacations nowadays revolved around skating competitions. We also don’t really have a ton of time. It’s hard to take a week off from the rink and go somewhere even if we had the extra money to do a proper vacation.
I know things change as we all get older but I do kind of miss our zoo vacations and the excitement the kids would get from seeing the animals.
J and L were out of town last week for a figure skating camp leaving B and I home alone. I had an opportunity for some free tickets to John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids and I thought, we haven’t done this in a while. Let’s go.
John Ball Zoo is located in John Ball Park on Grand Rapids west side. The entrance to the zoo is on Fulton Street just before it merges with Lake Michigan Drive and interchange with I-196.
We got super lucky and found parking pretty close to the entrance. I pulled in to the spot and we walked past the administration building and up to the entrance.
We’ve been to John Ball Zoo a few times since moving to Michigan in 2008. I wrote about our first trip to the zoo with my niece way back in 2010. A lot has changed in 14 years so I thought it was time for an update.
The ticket counter is right outside the gate. The daily admission rates right now (8/5/24) are $22 for adults and $17 for kids under the age of 12. Like I mentioned, I had a couple of free tickets so we took advantage of not having to pay to get in.
The actual entrance to the zoo is just to the left of the ticket building. There are a couple of employees standing there to scan tickets
The first thing we saw when walking through the gate was a dinosaur. They have the Dino Adventures happening right now. There was actually a couple outside the gate that B thought were “creepy” when we walked past them. He’s not a kid who’s in to dinosaurs so this event spread throughout the zoo really didn’t interest him at all.
John Ball Zoo has a pretty unique set up. There’s really not a lot of land for the zoo in this park so the zoo goes up moreso than out. The land area is 140 acres and has over 2000 animals. For comparison, Binder Park Zoo near Battle Creek is 433 acres has around 500 animals. John Ball Zoo makes use of every inch of land they have. You will do a lot of stairs and a lot of climbing inclines at this zoo.
The first exhibit you come to in the Entry Valley is the Pygmy Hippo Pavilion. The hippos were keeping themselves cool and just kind of laying around in the mid. It’s a cool exhibit with viewing windows both above and below the water level but there wasn’t much activity. It was a pretty hot and humid afternoon so there actually wouldn’t be a lot of animals moving around.
We veered off to the right after passing the Bald Eagles to the Wild Way Trail. B was already asking how long we were going to be there (a common question from him recently) so I was looking for something to catch his interest. I was hoping kangaroos would do that.
It was feeding time for the Wallaby’s so we did get a pretty up close look at them. B snapped out of his “ready to go home already”ness and started to get a little interested.
We moved on from the Wallaby’s to find what B was looking for. Monkey’s We found the Black Howler monkey just down the trail. Right next to that was a Ring Tailed Lemur. Always a favorite of ours because B got a Lemur stuffy when we went to the Milwaukee Zoo. Somehow, I ended up with it in my arms overnight and when B woke up in the morning, I got scolded with “Don’t sweep with my wemur.” We still have that lemur. Neither of the animals were very active but at least we got to see them.
Then it was time for the first disappointment of the day. The ropes course was closed. An employee saw us standing there and said it was too hot. They took a temperature reading over 110 degrees so it wasn’t safe to have staff out there for an extended period of time.
He got over the disappointment pretty quickly as we walked to Red’s Hobby Farm. The goats have ALWAYS been B’s favorite part of the zoo. Again, more stories I could tell you about B running in to Binder Park’s petting zoo screaming “I’m gonna pet that goat” to apologizing to the goats in Milwaukee because he ran out food and they had to wait until I got them more.
You don’t get to feed the goats anymore which is kind of a bummer but you can still go in and pet them. B waited patiently for the little kids in front of them to have their turn then he sat on the ground petting the goats like they were his cats at home.
We washed hands and started walking again. Right away B saw a concession stand and asked if he could get some ice cream. It was pretty hot and they did have ice cream there so I said OK.
I was pretty tempted to get some chicken fingers too and in hindsight, I probably should have. I just got two scoops of ice cream in a dish for B though. He got one scoop of vanilla and one scoop of Superman. We found a nearby picnic table to sit down and eat out of the shade. He ate all of the Superman but left a little bit of the vanilla for me to finish off.
We got back on the trail and I thought maybe he’d want to go see the butterflies but he had no interest. It’s been a while but I’m pretty sure this exhibit used to be the one with the birds flying around that you could feed with food off a popsicle stick. Now it’s just a butterfly exhibit.
Now it was up the stairs to the Ideama Forest Realm. It’s quite a hike up there and when you get to the top, there’s a zipline. That was open and B had actually been pretty good so I let him do it. There’s both a minimum height and a minimum and maximum weight. I was too big to do it but B was good on both. The cost is $10 for non-members and you get to zip across the zoo waaaaay above the ground and zip back so you get two rides across. B, of course, loved it.
When he got done, he saw a sign for a panda. He was a little disappointed it was a red panda and not an actual panda but he still thought it was kinda cool.
I made B walk up this way because I wanted to go to the Tigers of the Realm enclosure. I kept saying the word “cats” and B kept asking, “Why are there cats in the zoo?” He was thinking house cats. I explained to him that lions and tigers are still considered cats. He looked at the tiger sleeping in the grass and said, “that’s how (our cat) sleeps on the rug!”
Time for another food stop.
B saw a sign for pizza and asked if he could get some. I hadn’t really fed him yet so I said yeah. There’s a concession stand right next to the tiger enclosure so we grabbed something there. I got him a slice of cheese pizza and a Fanta. The cost was just a little over $10
B is always so hit or miss with pizza. Sometimes he loves it. Sometimes he hates it. I was a little worried about this pizza but he took a bite and said, “This pizza is bussin’ which I guess means good? The pizza is really simple. It’s a thicker crust with a thin layer of sauce and a thin layer of cheese. He ate it down to the crust then handed the rest to me. It was fine but I wouldn’t call it my favorite pizza in the world. I’m just glad he ate it.
We headed back down to the main part of the zoo and immediately came upon camel rides. Remembering I didn’t spend any money on admission, I told him he could do one more activity. He really wanted to do the camel rides so we did it. It was $7 and he got two laps around a track guided by an employee. He said it was much cooler than riding a horse (when did he do that?) but it was also really bumpy.
We moved on to the rest of Africa after that. I was a little lost the whole trip because I didn’t have a paper map in my hand like I used to at zoos. They weren’t handing them out at the entry gate. I’m sure it’s a reducing waste thing. I could have brought up a map on my phone but didn’t want to be staring at it all day. They did have some pretty good wayfinding signs throughout the zoo but there’s not really a good loop to the zoo. You really have to watch the signs and follow the map to get to everything.
We were still looking for more monkey’s but first, we found the lion. Like many other animals, it was nap time. We had to climb up to the top of the Lion Lookout to find him near the back of the enclosure. I can’t say I wasn’t jealous of all the animals sleeping in the shade. It was a warm muggy afternoon.
We did eventually find the chimpanzees and unfortunately for B, there was a Virtual Reality movie ride. I already told him I was done paying for things. He didn’t have the meltdown I was expecting but he was really disappointed and blurted out, “I wish I wouldn’t have rode the dang camel.”
We hit the Natural Treasures indoor exhibit and B really perked up. The building filled with spiders, snakes, reptiles and so many other smaller animals really piqued his interest. He even found a cockroach and we made a video for his sister saying he had found her twin. He was really creeped out by the spiders and kinda creeped out but also intrigued by the snakes.
B was getting tired and really asking to go by this point. I said there wasn’t much left and he had been asking about the reptiles. I told him we’d go in to the aquarium and we could be done.
The penguins were the first thing inside the aquarium and it was feeding time so they were going nuts. There was a big crowd around them so he wasn’t super in to it. He went and the corner and was way more impressed with the small tank holding the spider crabs.
He actually found a lot of cool things in the aquarium and seemed much more impressed here than at many of the outdoor exhibits.
That pretty much ended out trip. There was a lot more we could have seen but we still spent about three hours walking around.
I’ve always enjoyed our trips to John Ball Zoo and enjoyed this one as well. B’s not nearly in to zoos as much as he was when he was too young to remember going but every now and then there’d be that little flash of the little boy who got excited about seeing the animals.