One of my absolute favourite places to visit is the zoo and luckily, John and Erin love them just as much as I do. Just over a week ago it was John’s birthday and we went away to London for the night using a Buy A Gift Voucher for a hotel stay. We needed something to do while we were there though so we decided that London Zoo was the way to go. Using Buy A Gift again, we chose the Entry To ZSL Zoo For 2 Adults experience which costs £48.60.
If we had bought tickets on the day to the zoo this would have cost us £59.50 so that’s already a saving of over £10. The £48.60 experience price is the same as buying your zoo tickets online advance. However, if you do this through the ZSL website you have to choose the date you wish to visit and tickets will only be valid for that day. The Buy A Gift experience voucher offers flexibility and freedom to visit whenever you like so if plans change, you don’t lose out on money!
Unlike with other Buy A Gift vouchers you don’t actually need to book your visit with this one. We arrived at London Zoo at around midday and realised that there was 2 different queues for different types of ticket. On the left the queue was for regular tickets being purchased on the day but to the right was pre-paid/ bought in advance tickets and this included the Buy A Gift Experience. We were able to skip the regular queue and pretty much walk straight in after a very quick bag check.
Erin had fallen asleep just before we got to the zoo so John and I was able to have a little walk around on our own to start with. We soon realised that we were going to have to wake Erin up or she could have slept through most of the zoo!
Even though we went in the middle of the summer holidays the zoo wasn’t nearly as crazy as I had been expecting it to be. We were able to walk around pretty much all of the zoo without struggling to see the animals and it was really a stress free trip. The only area that had quite a wait was the butterfly tunnel due to there being limitations on how many people could enter at one time.
As it was quite a nice day, not too hot for August, we were able to get some nice family photos around the zoo. Usually I’m too hot and don’t want my photo taken but I have been trying to make sure I am in them more and the zoo was a great place for this.
One of both John and Erin’s highlights was going to the Reptile House to see where the scene from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was shot. Erin loves Harry Potter and the snake so she was super excited about seeing this. Luckily, she didn’t really realise that there wasn’t actually a snake in that enclosure as I think she would have been quite upset about it if she had.
We had such a nice day at the zoo and I wish we could have spent longer there. We were a bit limited on time for this trip but I think Erin would love to do a full day next year. As Erin is under 3 we didn’t need to buy her a ticket this time but Buy A Gift have various experiences available for London Zoo so we would definitely buy one again for our next visit.
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Disclaimer: We received this experience for the purpose of this post. All opinions are our own.